When Your Smart Home Calls Customer Service

Everything in my house is connected. Mostly to customer service.

The smart home was supposed to eliminate little inconveniences. Instead, the refrigerator has Wi-Fi, the thermostat has opinions, the speaker needs an account, and every appliance seems to know exactly how to contact technical support.

That’s the strange thing about connected technology. The more devices we add to the network, the more opportunities we create for something to stop working.

A regular appliance either worked or it didn’t. A smart appliance can lose its connection, forget its password, need an update, reject the app, misunderstand the network, or announce that a service is temporarily unavailable.

We saw the same technological confidence in Even Smart Homes Lose the Remote, where an entire collection of intelligent devices still couldn’t solve one of civilization’s oldest problems. And When Your Smart Light Starts Networking shows what happens when connected devices become a little too connected.

The smart home really has accomplished something remarkable.

Everything talks to everything else.

Unfortunately, most of them are calling customer service.

Explore more Chad Geepeety™ cartoons about customer service, smart homes, connected devices, and technology that creates its own support department.