- Some Tado customers have received a notification on a new subscription
- The message said that the Tado application will soon cost £ 1 per month
- Tado says that it was part of a marketing study and that no user was billed
Some owners of intelligent Tado thermostats feel hot under the collar after the company conducted a marketing study suggesting that its application could soon require a subscription. A handful of users and potential customers who were shopping in the Tado online store recently saw a message saying that there would soon be monthly costs to use the Tado application – although those who clicked on a check box to confirm that they have understood were informed that it was only a test.
The pop-up message, which has been shared on Reddit and the company’s assistance forums, indicates that the users of the application will soon be billed £ 1 ($ 1.20 / 2 $ 2 in the) per month “to continue to offer you innovative functionalities and a first-rate service” and to compensate for increasing commercial costs.
According to the alert, the costs would come into force from May 1, but the use of Tado devices via Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Apple Homekit is still free.
Tado App Monthly Charge of R / Tado
When Techradar contacted Tado for a comment, a spokesperson said: “As it is typical of the industry, Tado regularly studied marketing and research, and examines customer comments every day. The people involved in this study on paid applications have kept full access to the Tado app and the tests are now over.”
Free or fresh?
So, Tado will really start to charge costs? We don’t know. It certainly looks like a possibility, but at this stage, it could go in both directions.
Tado already has a subscription service called Auto Assist, which allows users to completely automate their heating and cooling of households and unlocks additional features. For example, rather than simply sending a notification if a window is left open, automatic assistance will automatically adjust the heating to avoid wasting energy. It can also use geofencing to automatically deactivate your heating when no one is at home and turn it over when the first person returns.
Some tado owners have said that it did not care about the idea of paying costs to use the application if it also comes with Auto Assist to soften the agreement.
R / Tado comment
The problem is that other customers have bought tado equipment in the conviction that the basic application would remain without subscription, and many users on the company’s support forums and on Reddit are unhappy with the idea, and the way in which Tado hid the fact that it put a marketing study until users are clicking on.
We will have to wait and see what the company decides to do with the information it has collected, and if it goes forward with a subscription or maintains the free model with Auto Assist as an optional paid.
Do you have a Smart Tado thermostat, and would you be ready to pay to use the application to control it? Let us know in the comments.
