Pinwheel Kids PhonesReviews of pinwheel.com

Response from Pinwheel Kids PhonesFeb 20, 2021

Janet, Too bad Pinwheel wasn't a fit! It's definitely a challenge to work with a beta product. I hope your parental controls foray goes better for you and would honestly like to know if it does. While we're in beta, we've definitely had some issues. For example, right now text history doesn't work quite right (lots of duplicates and intermittent data)... but then again, we're the first company to ever give parents complete text history in this way, without having to ask the child for the phone. It takes several releases to work out the issues. With that said, the core issues of the phone are there and I think we just weren't a good fit with you as an early adopter and us still in beta/R&D mode. - Curated apps have worked – there's not bad stuff on Pinwheel, and lots of good (more than competitors like Gabb) - The contact safelist works – spam calls and texts can't get through! - Mode changing works – the phone goes into night mode at night where it only has emergency contacts and zero apps, and allows more apps and contacts during the day These core features have worked throughout the last several months, admittedly with some hiccups like cloned days or modes and some UX challenges around it. As we work on text history and group texting features, we ask folks reading this to have patience with us during the beta process! It's still pretty valuable by comparison to other devices, and a great first kids phone, even as new features come along with many bumps and bruises. We plan to be out of beta later this year!

Response from Pinwheel Kids PhonesJan 24, 2021

Hi AJ. Thank you for the positivity about our customer care team and their open, honest communication. We're really sorry that expectations and reality didn't match for you. We haven't intentionally hid these things. We have launched a product in beta over the past several months and learned tons and rapidly had to communicate and research all kinds of things we didn't know or didn't know would be important! I hope the following information helps any future customers reading this, and possibly motivates you to change/remove your review. :) 1. Incomplete Disclosure about service: We provide this information in every place we can think of, though perhaps it isn't formatted as easily to find right now (...like much of our evolving website). (a) In our FAQs, which are also linked from the Cellular section of the product pages: We made a list of *exactly* the carriers that we know work. We haven't been able to test every MVNO yet, so we have to clearly state what we know does and what doesn't work. https://support.pinwheel.com/kb/cellular-providers/list-of-cellular-providers (b) On our pricing page: we state that the GSM model works on all GSM, but only mention Verizon CDMA instead of saying it works on CDMA, following it with "other CDMA networks do not work." As the person who wrote those exact words, I can tell you the intent wasn't to hide the ball but to be clear! There is absolutely *zero advantage* to us to have someone purchase a phone that won't work for them, and our refund policy is crazy generous to be doubly sure that's true! Somehow the words or process let you down, but the intent isn't to hide. 2. Incomplete disclosure about the phone: I'd challenge your perspective on two counts. (a) Regarding the "a subsidized and locked $0 phone with $150 of Pinwheel OS work done to the system:" the thing is that that's the primary reason we thought people purchased a Pinwheel! Because we take hardware and unload Android and load it with Pinwheel OS, a process that is not easy! The only reason to purchase from Pinwheel is to get what's on that Pinwheel OS. And that phone doesn't cost us $0 to get into the office before we re-program it as a Pinwheel phone! We had to find a model that we could pass to customers without charging $300 and wasn't carrier locked. (b) By the time people read this review, the Slim will probably be something else! Samsung just discontinued the A01 and we're testing the likely next Slim model with fervor! The A01 wasn't the first model either. The reason to buy a Pinwheel is *not* the hardware it's on! We really hope people go purchase the exact hardware they want if that's why they're getting a phone. Getting a Pinwheel is a choice about a philosophy of kids and tech and wellness, and the hardware changes while we're in the early stages of building a company where hardware makers won't even talk to us to build a partnership ;) (c) It's right there in the picture: Samsung. Again, as the decisionmaker here, in the early days we communicated more about the model of the phone and found people were *extremely confused* thinking they could get these phones and then Pinwheel-ize them. I'd love to hear about how to make it both clear and transparent! The goal is to be clear about what we're selling: a phone that does something different, on behalf of families and parents... the exact specs of which frequently change while we're in beta! Finally, as you can see in my answer here, hiding information isn't "purposeful" like you say! I totally agree we can get more clear and feedback like yours helps us to do that. I hope you'll reconsider the claim that we're trying to be tricksy!! Warmly, A Co-Founder

Response from Pinwheel Kids PhonesJan 15, 2021

<3 from me, a grateful salamander

Response from Pinwheel Kids PhonesJan 15, 2021

Hi Laci. My name is Shelley. I am a mom, and I got my daughter a Pinwheel around the same time you did. Hers worked great, until the Christmas chaos. (And I literally cried with joy when it started working again last week. My daughter was super unhappy about it not working, too.) Because Pinwheel felt like an answer to my prayers, too — I am now the “Chief Mom” at Pinwheel. I want it to succeed so much, I dropped everything else to join this team. I have quickly discovered that it matters deeply to me that this go well for every Pinwheel family. And while perfection feels pretty far out of reach right now, I’m grateful to be part of a team that tries as hard as this one does. I’ve been with other tech startups, and I’ve never witnessed this level of skill and determination and love before. Your review stunned me for a while, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to possibly make it right. Your words have certainly deepened my resolve to help Pinwheel grow and improve in whatever ways I can so no mom ever has to go through that frustration. Thank you for that. We can, of course, make it right with a refund and all of that. Just say the word. But YOU matter. Your SON matters. The fact that you did your research and found your way to a brand new product speaks volumes about how hard you tried to find something good, and I wish your leap of faith had involved flying and not a crash landing. Your time and frustration matter. All I have right now is this: I am going to reach out to you via email. If you will grant me the grace of a phone call or a reply, I would be grateful for the opportunity to hear about everything that happened, and how it impacted you. I can’t go back in time and fix it. I would if I could. If you don’t want to talk, I understand that, too. I can understand how you might be angry enough to not want to. And I am hopeful that you have just enough wishing that it would work to be willing to share your story with me.

Response from Pinwheel Kids PhonesJan 11, 2021

You have every right to be extremely frustrated with Pinwheel. We should have been more prepared for the Christmas day flood. I know it's not relevant to know what happened—we under-delivered on our promises. Yet to give some reassurance fo the future, here's why it was a surprise: we deployed an innovative text history feature a few weeks before, and thought it was going fine. What's innovative is that we're storing/intercepting every text in the database and releasing the safe ones at the right mode—that's a lot of tech work in the background. We went from a few thousand per day to 45,000 and it overwhelmed everything. And ruined Christmas gifts for a lot of families. Here's what we've done to respond to our letdown: 1. Hire a new Director of Engineering and two new software developers 2. Rearchitected our database and APIs to handle this load well. 3. Fought with Amazon Web Services to increase our limits 7 times. 4. Refunded all affected customers for January. 5. I have also given you another $50 in service credit to compensate for the T-Mobile expense. Please let us know what else we can do to make it right. As of today, the portal is back up and running.

Response from Pinwheel Kids PhonesJan 11, 2021

Chris, Every single thing you said here is spot on. Please check again, as the portal is now up and running again today without spinning on different tabs. We're noticing a few minor issues (timestamps off, for example, on texts), but by and large it's stable. You're right that we launched a bit early! The "public beta" is the only real way to launch a product like this. We are about to start making the parental portal as an app, but in software it costs much more to build and maintain an app and we weren't yet certain which parent portal features would be the highest value to customers and what was missing. For example, we got GPS wrong the first time, the app boutique needs to sort completely differently, and teenagers are on here way more than we planned for. Only now can we make the investment to build mobile apps and maintain those additional code-bases and high costs of change in the App Stores. Thanks for the generous 3-stars. If those milestones above are what it takes for 5, I hope we can earn all 5 by June!

Response from Pinwheel Kids PhonesJan 11, 2021

T Champ, I'm so sorry we let you down. On Christmas too! Your disappointment is completely understandable. I'm a parent, too, and I know what that means. The past few weeks have been an all-in firefight through AWS issues, database limits, API calls, and bugs, with the insane volume from Christmas day. We should've been more ready. First off, your portal is working again. We have to get that really stable before investing in a mobile app that contains its functionality, hopefully by late Spring. Second, here's what we've done to respond to our letdown: 1. Hire a new Director of Engineering and two new software developers 2. Rearchitected our database and APIs to handle this load well. 3. Fought with Amazon Web Services to increase our limits 7 times. 4. Refunded all affected customers for January. Please let me know what else we can do to re-earn your trust, besides everything working again.