Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsHigh Hope but Terrible Bugs + Failed Promises
Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2022
I’m not sure how much more I can vent my frustration about the August Lock over the last 11 months than to share it here. Unfortunately customer service has repeatedly delayed a response in the last 11 months to provide a solution for the problems I’m facing. Unfortunately, the issues above continue to happen.
I’ve never felt so insecure about one piece of my house – the August Lock I intended to buy has not been the easy, accessible, and consistent lock I’ve hoped for and I will continue to express my frustration to Amazon, to August, and to other friends + family until these fixes are made.
Issues with the lock itself (which led to me having to hire a locksmith to unlock the door for me since the August lock failed one time):
- The promise that I’ll be notified when my battery life is low has not been delivered for the last 2 battery replacements. The only way I found out that the battery life was low was by calling August after I was already locked out of my house, to which I then had to purchase a $100 locksmith to come and open the door for me for something that should have been preventable by August. Once again, I never received a notification that my battery life was low – and that’s happened for the last 2 cycles.
- My wifi on my August has shown to disconnect and reconnect every hour of the day, significantly draining my battery. The efficient and up-to-date wifi technology is not delivering as promised. I have a top of the line router and I've noticed hundreds of other consumers complain about the same issue - so it's guaranteed not just me.
- The battery life has been severely less than the 3-6 mo. promised. Perhaps that’s due to the wifi reconnecting, but it continuously drains beneath that period and I’ve never spent so much for batteries before, not even being able to find out it’s low until it stops working.
- The lock repeatedly has long pauses where I can’t unlock my door despite being next to it with Bluetooth on. It often has a delay where I stand outside waiting for my door to unlock despite clicking to unlock.
Issues with the app:
- My in-laws visited from Korea and were intending to use the August app as guests. I was able to add their names and contact as guests to the app and they received the notification to sign up. They did so, but were unable to unlock the door despite seeing the lock on their phone (brand new Galaxy – latest model). Multiple times they tried (on Bluetooth and on wifi separately), but it only worked once out of maybe 20 tries to click the red dot in the middle. I however was right next to them and could unlock and lock the door as needed. Again, the august lock has promised to be easily accessible (and only accessible) by smart phones, but in this situation it wouldn’t work and I wish I had a keypad to use for them. I don’t think I need to be the one paying $50 for that since the “promised” option from August didn’t work.
- August says and promises that the lock is easily transferrable for guests, friends and family, and vacation guests. It has not worked as promised, and I feel like I am getting scammed by August because it won’t even work for my father-in-law. He had no way to enter the house on his own despite having the app installed, and the lock (my house) visible on his screen. The app just would not work for him. How can I expect to rent out my place to guests if the basic app doesn’t even work for them? If August can’t deliver this promise with this lock, then I would expect at the very least they give a keypad to everyone to mitigate against that.
Issues about customer service:
- I’ve called in so many times only to be told 1) I can’t get a refund, and 2) that a supervisor will call back, to which they never do.
- I’m told repeatedly that the August lock will be improved and updated, but currently there are no fixes (talk about terrible tech support!) Are they not working to improve it?
- At this point, I’ve spent probably 5-10+ hours calling August team and researching on my own how to fix these problems, to which thousands of other forums seem to note the same issues. Clearly there’s a problem with the lock and no one is fixing it or letting us know that it’s going to be fixed.
