Re:Wattvision: The Smart Energy Sensor
by Dylan16807 on Monday August 13, 2012 @10:48PM
(#4379154)
Charging for a service is fine, but I agree that it is legitimately insulting to charge for use of a consumer-owned device.
That said, what wattvision lists in its FAQ is extremely fair. Using data from the last three months is free, so if you want to do your own processing you can easily download from there even if the device is difficult to directly access.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4377054
It is one thing to say "Wattvision costs too much for me; I think they should lower or restructure the price".
It is another thing to say "the way this startup has structured their pricing is insulting to me".
The fact that you were easily able to come up with a market substitute for this offering just underscores how silly the idea of being "insulted" by pricing is.
Things cost what they cost, not what we think they should cost. As a general rule, we HN'ers suck at thinking about what things should cost.