[HN Gopher] Parents outraged at Snoo after smart bassinet compan...
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Parents outraged at Snoo after smart bassinet company charges fee
to rock crib
Author : pseudolus
Score : 76 points
Date : 2024-08-18 21:02 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.independent.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.independent.co.uk)
| talldayo wrote:
| A tragic catch-22. You design and build the app-enabled internet
| rocker crib, but cannot justify supporting the app or the
| internet support without a subscription fee.
|
| Reminds me of the "Someone Who Is Good At The Economy Please Help
| Me" memes.
| upon_drumhead wrote:
| No, I think this is greedier than that.
|
| > The company's founder, Harvey Karp, said the pricing change
| was necessary to "bring in revenue," noting that the company
| was not underwritten by a university or the government, and
| must survive on its sales alone. He said his ultimate goal
| would be to see the Snoo paid for by the government or by
| insurance companies, but it's unclear if there has been any
| substantive movement toward achieving that end.
|
| They want the government/insurance to buy them in bulk and then
| rent seek for everyone using them. There's zero reason why for
| the price this couldn't be done completely local and not cost
| Snoo a cent to run. They just don't want to because the long
| term strategy is to collect revenue forever.
| idatum wrote:
| I wonder too if the data collected via that subscription is
| useful to monetize somehow? Maybe like health data from your
| watch?
| clintonb wrote:
| We had a Snoo for our kid. I cannot see how anyone knowing
| our kid was a poor sleeper when he was born, and improved
| over six months, would be worth anything to anyone.
| "Parents are sleep-deprived" is a pretty well-known fact at
| this point.
| atoav wrote:
| "Your kid is a worse sleeper than most other kids, for
| only 999,99 USD you can learn more a out the possible
| causes"
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think that would be pretty good data for advertising to
| desperate parents.
|
| Hell, the fact alone that they have a $1700 bassinet
| probably makes them a valuable target
| rolph wrote:
| a rocking basinet is a pendulum, thus mass of the child may
| be determined on a day to day average, thus inference may
| be made, such as when larger clothes are a good ad to push.
| nickff wrote:
| Your quote doesn't contradict the parent comment. Snoo may
| need to "bring in revenue" because they're losing money. They
| may, simultaneously, want to have their product purchased in
| large quantities, as that would be another way to "bring in
| revenue".
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| The government can't even subdize child care. What interest
| would they have in buying a bunch of high tech baby rockers?
| uoaei wrote:
| Tragic? You really think the _company_ is the poor victim??
|
| Company made choices, they were bad choices. Bad business
| deserves zero sympathy.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't have any problem empathizing with business mistakes.
| I have made bad choices both as an individual and as a
| company.
|
| Doesn't mean I am willing to subsidize them, but I get it.
| etimberg wrote:
| Similar problems exist with the Nanit baby camera. It's free to
| view the camera from the app but to view it from their website
| costs money.
|
| That being said if you know how to run docker you can just proxy
| the video feed to vlc pretty easily but most parents don't have
| the time for that
| Laaas wrote:
| Why not just use a normal camera?
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| The Dormi baby monitor app works extremely well, and you can
| install it on any old smartphone to repurpose as a baby
| monitor. For my son, I just velcroed an outdated phone with a
| worn out battery to the wall. It is really well designed
| because it also notifies if the connection is lost or if
| anything goes wrong, which a lot of expensive commercial
| cameras don't.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| It has a few bells and whistles that are worth having. We
| combined a Nanit camera and an Owlet sleep sock and that gave
| us god peace-of-mind at night. I only wish we'd topped it off
| with an analog walkie talkie as a backup in case the Wi-Fi
| went down.
| krisoft wrote:
| I feel differently about that. (And it is possible that it is
| just because I don't understand what Snoo does)
|
| To view a baby camera over the internet someone has to run a
| server. To run that server costs money. (If you think that the
| actual server/bandwidth cost is negligible, make sure to also
| include the cost of keeping the team employed to maintain those
| servers.) Someone has to pay for that. Based on what you say it
| sounds like the Nanit baby camera degrades gracefully to the
| local only features if you don't pay the subcription. That is
| kind of the only honest way to run a business with a connected
| component.
|
| As long as they were up-front about this at purchase I can't
| see a problem with that.
|
| How is this different from Snoo? Quite frankly I don't see how
| the baby rocking function requires a remote connection. It
| should be totally implemented locally inside the basinet and
| there should be no on-going cost. Therefore the only reason
| they might lock the feature away is due to greed.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > To view a baby camera over the internet someone has to run
| a server.
|
| In an alternate universe with better technology, this would
| not be true. You'd connect to a host over the WAN just as you
| connect over the LAN. Unfortunately ISPs and firewalls and
| NAT have made this much more difficult and complicated than
| it should be.
|
| My heart aches when I think about how many company servers
| are out there running only to facilitate "doing X with your
| LAN, but from the Internet".
| clintonb wrote:
| The market is saturated. Four years ago we could buy a new one
| for $1300 or buy used on Craigslist for $800. We went with
| Craigslist, and resold six months later for $900 (not a typo).
|
| The bassinet is well-made so it would be silly to throw it out
| after 2-3 kids. The fact that the resellers are other parents
| makes me trust a little more that they aren't selling a
| broken/dirty bassinet, so why buy new for double the cost?
|
| They are a victim of their own success.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It depends. One of my rules is to never buy a secondhand
| mattress and I definitely wouldn't buy one for my baby. I'm not
| sure off the mattress comes with this bassinet or not.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| This article mentions that the Snoo was designed to prevent
| SIDS, but the number one factor predicting SIDS is a used
| mattress... and interventional studies have proven it is not
| caused by other confounding factors like poor familes or
| second children being more likely to have used mattresses- It
| can be prevented with a new mattress or non-permeable
| mattress cover.
|
| The Snoo has an integrated mattress in a non-standard size,
| but you can buy new replacements from the manufacturer.
| lolinder wrote:
| > the number one factor predicting SIDS is a used mattress
|
| As a three-time parent who did extensive reading on SIDS
| prevention before the first one and brushed up before each
| of of the other two: _What?_
|
| Do you have a citation for this? Because my recollection is
| that all of these show up on the list of things to avoid
| for SIDS but a used mattress never featured once in my
| reading:
|
| * Smoking
|
| * Fuzzy stuff in the bed (stuffed animals, blankets)
|
| * Sleeping on stomach
|
| * Heat
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| As an anxious parent and an academic scientist, I did a
| deep dive into the peer reviewed literature on causes of
| SIDS when I first became a parent, which admittedly was a
| few years back.
|
| I came across what is called the "Toxic Gas" theory of
| SIDS, which is admittedly not part of the major
| recommendations for avoiding SIDS in the USA- but I read
| all of the literature on it, and I found the evidence
| quite convincing, and the dismissals to be lacking. There
| were however dismissals in many popular review articles
| and mainstream recommendations, but they never presented
| an articulate rebuttal of what seemed like a reasonable
| concept, and convincing evidence.
|
| The idea is that fungi in an older dirty mattress
| metabolize flame retardant compounds and produce toxic
| gases, which were measured in high concentrations with a
| mass spec on the surfaces of mattresses where infants had
| actually died from SIDS[1].
|
| Other studies found correlations with mattress age after
| controlling for other variables, and decreases in SIDS
| rates with interventions based on non-permeable mattress
| wraps [2, 3].
|
| Thinking about it fits neatly with some of the other risk
| factors you mentioned, as they reduce airflow, or put the
| infants face closer to the mattress surface.
|
| I think it needs a lot more systematic studying, but it
| seemed convincing enough for me to buy a new mattress
| without phosphorus, arsenic or antimony containing flame
| retardants.
|
| I'm not 100% sure about this theory, but I would not let
| any infant in my care sleep on an old mattress, or a
| mattress with potentially toxic flame retardants.
|
| Surely there isn't one single "cause of SIDS" as it is
| just death, and any person can suddenly die at any age
| for any number of different reasons.
|
| [1] Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: a possible primary
| cause https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S
| 001573689...
|
| [2] Used infant mattresses and sudden infant death
| syndrome in Scotland: case-control study
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC131017/
|
| [3] Cot Death--Cause and PreventionExperiences in New
| Zealand 1995-2004 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.
| 1080/1359084040001683...
| doe_eyes wrote:
| The problem with a full-size mattress is that you can't
| really wash it thoroughly. Although, do you also have a rule
| to never sleep at a hotel?
|
| Anyway, the soft bits of these bassinets are presumably small
| enough to fit into a washer?
| taspeotis wrote:
| > The company's founder, Harvey Karp, said ... the company was
| not underwritten by a university or the government, and must
| survive on its sales alone.
|
| Thanks for that primer on private enterprise...
| disillusioned wrote:
| This is code for "our early investors are disappointed we
| didn't build in a subscription model to begin with."
| uoaei wrote:
| You bought into a walled garden, now you're upset when the owner
| of that garden decides to do some landscaping. Something tells me
| people aren't really getting this whole "you need to own stuff to
| have control over it" thing.
| ximus wrote:
| don't they own the crib after paying $1700?
| thrtythreeforty wrote:
| Not quite, dear customer: You own the motionless hunk of
| plastic, and you only rent the functionality. See also
| streaming hardware, BMW heated seats, textbooks, and home
| security systems.
| cwillu wrote:
| Don't forget exercise equipment; last rower a friend bought
| required a credit card before it would let you adjust the
| tension.
| pfisch wrote:
| You don't have to pay the subscription to make it rock. The
| subscription just tracks sleeping hours.
| haswell wrote:
| When you buy a PlayStation 5 or an iPhone, you're buying into a
| walled garden. People generally understand the implications of
| their choice of garden.
|
| Looking at this product on Amazon right now, there's zero
| indication that there's some subscription component, nor would
| I have any reason as a potential buyer to suspect that there's
| a garden, much less a wall.
|
| To say nothing of the ridiculousness of the restriction itself.
| For all of the problems with walled gardens, they generally
| come with tradeoffs, some of which are beneficial.
|
| This looks like nothing but pure dark patterns and greed.
| uoaei wrote:
| You imply there is some moral relevance to commerce. There is
| not. You either own a thing to control it, or you do not. I'm
| not saying relying on goodwill and enforcement is naive, but
| you always have to keep the possibility in mind that somebody
| somewhere will implement some new feature locking you out of
| the experience you expected, _unless you own the thing_.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| The SNOO is cheaply made and poorly engineered despite the
| incredibly high price- and there isn't much to it. It should cost
| ~$45, not the $1695 it actually costs.
|
| I recently rebuilt a used snoo myself for my newborn nephew, and
| was shocked to see that it is built to move everything on rubber
| rollers, and those rollers use the wrong material, so they both
| slip and grind to dust quickly.
|
| That said- it works. I would have given my right arm for one when
| my son was newborn and had "colic" and would literally scream
| continuously from 10pm to 4am everyday for months. I was up all
| night holding him by myself, using the method developed by Dr.
| Harvey Karp (who later founded SNOO)- which is exactly what the
| SNOO copies and replicates automatically, which is the only thing
| that would calm him. It was exhausting, and I started to
| hallucinate frequently, and make dangerously bad decisions from
| lack of sleep. I think the SNOO would have saved me.
| cwillu wrote:
| > built to move everything on rubber rollers, and those rollers
| use the wrong material, so they both slip and grind to dust
| quickly.
|
| Sounds like it was designed deliberately to reduce the
| aftermarket supply. Maybe the first person can sell it, but
| avoiding the creation of a robust secondary market has been the
| dream of a great many MBAs.
| etrautmann wrote:
| We borrowed a snoo and set it all up before giving birth -
| everything was ready. Come home from the hospital with a one
| day old and it refuses to connect to the app. At some point
| after spending 45 min debugging and resetting the device I
| realized how awful this experience was. Internet of shit.
| mtmail wrote:
| Did it eventually work?
| stavros wrote:
| Smart devices' biggest appeal is that they can turn what was
| a one-off sale to a recurring subscription.
|
| When I say "appeal" I mean to the company, not to the
| customer, of course.
| er4hn wrote:
| Where can you get a better built and cheaper bassinet?
| lolinder wrote:
| Basically anything you can find on Craigslist/FB
| Marketplace/your local equivalent for <$100.
|
| It's a small bed on wheels--everything you do that makes it
| more expensive than that also adds unnecessary moving parts
| that can break.
| sklargh wrote:
| Am I the only one who thinks this is unfair? If you use the Snoo
| successfully it gets you two-plus hours of sleep a night. That's
| magical as a parent of a newborn.
|
| We're talking about a critical app for a hardware device that has
| a lifespan of several babies (ours is going on six as it
| circulates among friends). We should reward people who make
| hardware so durable and effective that they've sold so many of
| them they need to find another revenue stream.
|
| We talk a lot in this community about maintainers getting paid.
| Here is a company within a ferociously regulated and risky market
| doing that.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I suspect maintainers would complain a lot less if everyone
| paid them $1700 first.
| sowbug wrote:
| Bassinets don't need maintainers.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| > sensors that detect when the baby is crying and simulates the
| sounds of the womb to help keep babies
|
| I realize this may come off as a bit insensitive but isn't this
| taking away a chance to bond with your child? Children not being
| physically held enough at young age has lifelong implications
| dhon_ wrote:
| Humans are complex. It depends greatly on the situation.
| dap wrote:
| > I realize this may come off as a bit insensitive but isn't
| this taking away a chance to bond with your child?
|
| Having a Snoo doesn't mean you never hold your child. Newborns
| provide many such opportunities. You don't need to take them
| all. See the comment above about a newborn that needed this for
| 6 hours a night for months.
|
| > Children not being physically held enough at young age has
| lifelong implications
|
| Citation needed? This is the sort of thing that people use to
| argue against sleep training, too, but I don't believe much
| evidence has been found for that.
| grvbck wrote:
| > Citation needed? This is the sort of thing that people use
| to argue against sleep training, too, but I don't believe
| much evidence has been found for that.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4088358/
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0504767102
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7502223/
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9599775/
|
| https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203758045
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8250458/
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33924970/
|
| https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-67860-2_.
| ..
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14984130/
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/infant-touch/
| doe_eyes wrote:
| Some infants cry a lot. Not every instance is a magical bonding
| opportunity, especially since you still need to get stuff done.
|
| There are high-tech child-rearing trends that I suspect might
| be doing harm, but a rocking bassinet probably isn't one.
| pfisherman wrote:
| Which high tech child rearing trends do you think are
| harmful? Just curious.
| etrautmann wrote:
| No, this does not take the place of physical interaction.
| You'll get a ton of that too. Rocking your baby to sleep isn't
| a great plan anyway.
| ilickpoolalgae wrote:
| Maybe, but the extra few hours we got of sleep each night meant
| the quality of interaction/bonding during our awake hours was
| higher.
| er4hn wrote:
| The first 3 months after my daughter was born I slept next to
| her while she was in this. If she was hungry or needed a change
| she'd let me know. This helped her sleep and helped the rest of
| us get some rest as well.
| Flop7331 wrote:
| Do you feel that way about shushing?
| oldpersonintx wrote:
| new parents are so easy to scam, they all want the best for their
| new child, and they think that means blowing $$$$ on too-deluxe
| baby gear they will only use for a short period of time
|
| we fell for it...plonked down $$$ for the deluxe stroller...used
| it four times
| pfisch wrote:
| That's fine, but the snoo isn't a scam. It works really well,
| and is far superior to any other bassinet on the market.
|
| If you value your sleep the snoo is worth it, and frankly I
| suspect there is a significant consumer base that would pay an
| even higher price for it.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I'm curious why you only used the stroller 4 times. We also
| decided on a very expensive stroller and infant cat seat, and
| we're pretty happy with them. Assuming the stroller continues
| to work well for 3ish years I think we'll have no regrets.
|
| Of course, we don't know how happy we'd have been with a
| cheaper option. That probably would have been fine too. But the
| build quality seems noticeable and it doesn't feel like we got
| taken advantage of.
| stavros wrote:
| > The company's founder, Harvey Karp, said the pricing change was
| necessary to "bring in revenue,
|
| That sounds like a "you" problem.
| _8L34K wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand the $1700 price tag. Self rocking
| bassinets can be had for a couple hundred dollars. Many have the
| same functionality, with cry detection and white noise
| capabilities. They also don't require the use of an app, it's
| just a self contained unit. Where is the 500% upcharge going?
| ronsor wrote:
| The cloud, of course.
| pfisch wrote:
| That is not true. Show me another self rocking bassinet like
| the snoo.
|
| Also the snoo does not require the app at all.
| _8L34K wrote:
| Just google "self rocking bassinet", but that is also why I
| asked - so if you are confident enough to say it's not true,
| then please explain.
|
| Does it just come down to a different controller/set of
| algorithms for governing the rocking/white noise
| capabilities? The product itself doesn't seem to cost $1700
| dollars to produce - it seems to be a bassinet on rollers
| with a motor attached that can play sound.
| sarchertech wrote:
| I bought a Miku camera because it has a few extra features that I
| wanted and unlike the competition there was no monthly fee.
|
| Well then they screwed up by pushing a bad over the air update
| that literally bricked all operating cameras. They made that
| right by replacing them all, but then they went bankrupt.
|
| A new company bought their assets during bankruptcy and the first
| thing they did was add a monthly fee to use any of the "advanced"
| features (all the reasons I bought it in the first place.)
| lolinder wrote:
| I can't even imagine spending $1700 on a bassinet in the first
| place. As the article notes, this thing gets used for ~5 months
| (6 if you're _really_ pushing it) at which point the kid is done.
| If you 're going to have another kid then you put it into storage
| for a few years before it gets a second round of 5 months of use
| (assuming the company you bought your smart bassinet from doesn't
| brick it in the interim).
|
| At its simplest, it's a tiny bed on wheels and you can pick one
| up for free from a local parent. If you want to get really fancy
| you can get a self-rocking bassinet for <$400.
|
| Who are these people who are willing to spend $1700 on a bassinet
| but then get outraged when the clearly-exploitative company
| decides to exploit them for another $100?
| id00 wrote:
| Used it for both of my kids. Both times we bought a used one
| for $800 and sold for the same price after it was no longer
| needed.
| px1999 wrote:
| The aftermarket for these things means that the cost winds up
| being split between multiple parties in a lot of cases.
|
| Anecdotally, most parents within my circle bought their Snoo
| used and sold it after use. I bought an unopened snoo from
| facebook marketplace for $X and sold it after 6 months for
| $X-200.
|
| I was a little annoyed that Happiest Baby is meddling with the
| resale value (because I was expecting to be able to sell it on
| after a few months of use)
|
| IMO even though the product is overpriced, I'd have happily
| paid 5k for the extra sleep I believe it gave me.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Happy Baby customers received an email in June alerting them to
| the change in pricing. Buyers who picked up a Snoo before July 15
| were grandfathered into the previous structure, while anyone who
| bought after that was locked into the subscription model.
| rzimmerman wrote:
| The Snoo is great and the key feature that actually helps prevent
| SIDS is the restraints and swaddle, which is not being moved to a
| subscription here. It's actually FDA approved to reduce the risk
| of SIDS. The "bonus" rocking and soothing noises just help
| parents get more sleep.
|
| The Snoo is very expensive and easy to pass down or buy used. I
| think they probably screwed up by selling it outright. You can
| rent the Snoo, which is probably a better model for everyone.
| This is kind of a janky way to pull back some of the rental
| revenue they lost by selling a durable product that people only
| need for a few months.
|
| It feels gross, I get it. But it's effectively a $100 per child
| fee which is quite reasonable given the benefits. And there's no
| realistic way to charge for that other than subscription for the
| premium (non-safety) stuff. The alternative is to keep developing
| new models with new features and adding crap people don't need.
| One thing I love about the original Snoo is that it works fine
| without an Internet connection or app. I used the app and it was
| great, but it's nice to know that when you travel or lose power,
| it can still rock your baby and soothe them. I hope that's still
| the case if there's a subscription involved.
| lolinder wrote:
| > the key feature that actually helps prevent SIDS is the
| restraints and swaddle
|
| Just a note that the NIH guidelines specifically call out this
| marketing claim as BS:
|
| > Even though swaddling does not reduce the risk of SIDS, some
| babies are calmer and sleep better when they are swaddled. Even
| though swaddling does not reduce the risk of SIDS, some babies
| are calmer and sleep better when they are swaddled.
|
| They also call out the monitors specifically as also useless
| for SIDS and issue a general warning that products that claim
| to reduce SIDS are nearly-universally not useful and are often
| counterproductive.
|
| https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/reduce-risk/reduce
| tshaddox wrote:
| > And there's no realistic way to charge for that other than
| subscription for the premium (non-safety) stuff. The
| alternative is to keep developing new models with new features
| and adding crap people don't need.
|
| There's another alternative: simply sell them for a little more
| than they cost. Just keep doing that. Solid business plan.
| big-green-man wrote:
| Anybody who buys stuff like this deserves what they get.
| pvillano wrote:
| Why don't they just rent the thing entirely, six months at a
| time? Recurring revenue, tiered pricing, no secondhand market,
| and less waste from planned obsolescence.
| mtmail wrote:
| They offer rental, too
| https://www.happiestbaby.com/products/snoo-rental
| ilickpoolalgae wrote:
| We rented but we know a lot of parents that didn't because they
| didn't want a "used" bed for their newborn. To each their own.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Meanwhile Finnish babies sleep in the cardboard box that
| originally contained a government-supplied cache of baby clothes,
| pillows, blankets, and even a toy and book or two, while their
| parents are _both_ given 160 days (32 five-day work weeks) of
| paternal leave to care for the kid.
|
| Capitalism!
| mtmail wrote:
| Photo of the baby box and contents:
| https://yle.fi/a/74-20083915
| ilickpoolalgae wrote:
| I took a look at the features that are locked out and they seem
| reasonable to be behind a subscription as they require costs to
| maintain. Almost all of the features that do not require some
| sort of cloud service connection seem to remain free. It's also
| free for people who use the rental option.
|
| Backlash is also understandable as they are changing the status
| quo.
|
| Disclosure: We rented a Snoo and it was made a huge difference
| between our first (no Snoo) and second child.
|
| https://www.happiestbaby.com/blogs/snoo/premium-app-features....
| FireBeyond wrote:
| What? Almost none of those features require costs to maintain:
|
| - Car Ride Mode - adds extra bounces
|
| - Level Lock - don't change rhythm
|
| - Sleepytime Sounds - play sounds before and after sleep
|
| and so on.
|
| The only ones I can see? Tracking, Sleep Logs (but I'd also
| argue that given that this is a smart device, I'd say that they
| could be expected baselines).
|
| But as for the other, without being argumentative, I am
| sincerely struggling why it seems reasonable to you that "extra
| bounces", etc. are a Premium "subscription" feature.
| ryandrake wrote:
| About half of those premium features should not require a
| server or company-borne "costs to maintain." This seems like a
| pure cash grab: what subscription will the market bear?
| Flop7331 wrote:
| Very few of the premium features really require a cloud
| connection. The ones that do arguably aren't what the Snoo is
| for, e.g. diaper tracking.
| pfisch wrote:
| There is no fee to make it rock. This just isn't true.
| jarrettcoggin wrote:
| My wife and I are currently borrowing a Snoo from a friend and
| have found it very helpful. Our daughter is 8+ weeks and
| regularly sleeping 7+ hours in a single stretch each night,
| probably heavily due to the Snoo. When we first got the Snoo, we
| saw an immediate change in our daughter's sleep where she went
| from having a unreliable 2-3 hour stretch between feedings to a
| solid 3+ hours between feedings with less fits during her sleep
| and also falling to sleep faster when we put her in the Snoo.
|
| We understand the desire for the company to make money, but we
| feel there's a happy middle-ground where the Snoo could have the
| premium app subscription waived for the first child (6-12 months
| premium subscription free), but require a fee for the app for
| future children. That being said, the Snoo has been advertised
| for years around the core features that are now being locked
| behind a subscription.
|
| We are very fortunate to be borrowing the Snoo from our friend,
| but it definitely makes us second guess buying a Snoo if the
| price goes up due to the "mandatory" subscription fee. Would we
| still use the Snoo even if we had to pay the subscription fee?
| Most likely, because one is ultimately buying sleep back by using
| a Snoo. At the same time, the Snoo does not work for every child
| and we've heard of multiple parents in our friend circles who
| bought the Snoo but didn't end up using it because it didn't work
| for their children. It's kind of an expensive, risky bet to make
| for the potential chance that it may not work out.
|
| I personally think the Snoo is overpriced and think the true
| price is probably around $1,000, but it sounds like there are
| inefficiencies to be ironed out on Happiest Baby's side. The
| "mattresses" the Snoo comes with are simple foam and it's made up
| of a ton of plastic. Not being a physical product engineer
| myself, I think it could probably be re-engineered to bring the
| cost down while retaining the same feature set.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Let's write some open source bassinet firmware.
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