Petnet SmartFeeder

Garbage.Complete Garbage.If I could give this feeder zero stars I would.In my 34 years on this earth, I have never made a worse purchase in my life. Not even the crumby fishing lures I bought from an infomercial in the mid-90s comes close to just HOW BAD this purchase was.$175 for a pet feeder WHICH NEVER WORKED. We bought this to feed our cat while we took a trip across the country to see my mother. We completed the setup process and the machine seemed to work fine for a couple days. To our complete dismay and horror, the very day we left, the feeder didn't work. Our cat went hungry for 4 days because this hunk of junk NEVER WORKED PROPERLY, or for that matter, NEVER EVEN WORKED AT ALL.After we got back home, my husband and I spent HOURS AND HOURS of our Sunday resetting our router, resetting and re-setting up the feeder, and even went so far as to get a new wireless router. Nothing worked. Additionally, the app they force you to use for this feeder is awful. It's buggy, laggy, and is nothing more than a poorly disguised advertising/Point Of Sales/data-mining tool.TLDR: Don't waste your time with this piece of junk. Unless, of course, you want your animals to starve while you helplessly watch your $175 feeder continuously fail from over a thousand miles away.

I purchased a Petnet feeder because it said it could handle smaller portion sizes. Initially, it did.Then the portion sizes got larger. The feeder worked fine, it was just giving larger portions. It wasn't a big deal, and I liked the feeder, so I adjusted the feeding times.A few months after purchase, the feeder went offline for a prolonged period. It was still dispensing, so I wasn't concerned. I just couldn't make changes to the schedule, and was told via email from Petnet not to unplug it.That outage lasted 6-8 weeks. At the time, the Petnet team blamed its cloud services provider for failing. The smart thing to do would have been to switch providers after such an outage and lack of service.Petnet didn't do that, and is now all but out of business. In April 2020, the company sent an email to users laying its issues bare. It fired everyone, got rid of its offices, and was asking users if they were interested in a subscription service program to keep the feeders running.On top of the $150-ish for the feeder, it was now asking for $30 per year, or $4 per month, just to feed your pet. Or rather, it was asking if that was of interest.This was all after its latest 'outage' which took the feeder offline AND stopped dispensing meals. It's a brick. The feeders simply do not work because they have no cloud service to link to. Imagine spending $150 for a bucket to keep pet food in, because that's what the Petnet SmartFeeder is at this point.This has been discussed in the media (Digital Trends and Ars Technica both covered this issue), and the company has refused to speak to media entities or users. It's out of business, plain and simple.Why Petnet doesn't use a more reliable cloud service like AWS or Google Cloud is beyond me, but they didn't, and have effectively robbed users. The company is broke, out of service, and not discussing anything.

At first this auto pet feeder worked ok, at least like a normal scheduled feeder although the app could be better. However, after less than three months of service, it stopped working, the motor is making noise but no food came out. I went ahead and took apart the machine and found out that the clutch connecting the motor to the dispenser turbine and propeller broken, causing the motor to slip whenever there is load ( when the turbine and propeller touch the food). This was probably a result of a design flaw that the dispenser is more tend to be jammed if the food pieces are smaller, and it breaks clutch eventually after several forcibly dispenses. The only ways of solving this without buying a new one is replacing the plastic clutch, or like me, permanently locking the motor and the dispenser using super glue. I tried to contact the support about this issue and warranty but never heard anything back. Given by the short service life and poor support, it deserves a poor review from me. I would have bought from other manufacturers if I had known this beforehand.

Do not buy! The company went out of business and this feeder will not work. The app is no longer in the App Store. Below is information on the company as of April 2020.-We have furloughed 100% of our remaining staff-We have ceased all future product development, including bug fixes-We have turned off all non-infrastructure related expenses-We have terminated our office lease and are working remotely-We have applied for all available CARES stimulus funding

Your browser does not support HTML5 video.  Upon opening I noticed that the pull out tray was very loose and wobbly.It doesnt secure the bowl and also there were wires exposed underneath it.Not only did the bowl rock back and forth when attached, there was also a sizable gap between the feeder and bowl where food could get trapped in.Maybe this is a result of was damage during shipping?I really liked the first generation-which was built pretty solid and there was no issue with loose parts or exposed wires.So far tho pretty disappointed with quality at this price.I will not be replacing or ordering again from this brand

Your browser does not support HTML5 video.  On the same day I installed it, the cat went paws deep to enjoy its brand new all-you-can-eat buffet

Overall, it is great to use. My 3 cats love it.Update: 7 months later, the feeder has stopped working. I tried calling the customer service, but the line was busy. I sent an email to their customer service, but have not heard back for over 2 weeks. The interesting thing is that - after it stopped working it continued to send notifications that my cats were being fed - which was not the case. If I was relying on this feeder to feed my cats while I was away, I wouldn't even know something was wrong and my cats would starve. This is very disappointing!! DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT.

Be honest, I'm not a hater or advertiser, I bought the first one in November and the second one in January. Only one work adequately but the second machine doesn't. Even that, these machine get stuck the dry food inside the spining reel component oftentimes. And always disconnected. No customer service because you always get the machine to leave your message but they never call you back. I've checked others reviews like facebook , Instagram and many others , it was all the same problem like mine. After that I don't feel I can continue to trust that company and their pet feeder. What if after 7 months used, both machine stop working !? It's your own money you're putting in the water. It pretty experiences, 2 = 400$ CAD but it doesn't work properly so....... I returned it, both of them and got my refund as soon as possible. Otherwise, I love the concept, I love machine. What I can say!? It's my money I'm saving back. You decide where your money goes for good. I don't recommend you to buy. And get something else

DO NOT BUY THIS FEEDER! It worked fine for the first 7 month, except when the servers were down, couldn’t control through the app because of the bad cloud setup. In Any case, the food also would get jammed sometimes until it no longer got jammed. The motor would run (you could hear the sound) but the turning wheel that dispenses the food would not. It’s been 2 months now that I’ve tried to contact support/customer service and I cannot get anyone to respond to Twitter, emails or calls. So I’ve bought 2 of those and I’m sitting on $400 paper weights now. Amazon won’t take it back even thought they are the reseller so stay away unless you love to loose your money.

We bought two. The first one was never able to connect to their server. We got a second one that work for 10 minutes and would never turn on again. Support was as helpful ad they could from a distance but in the end we had to return it. It is too bad because it looked like a wonderful machine on paper.