by jjulius | 2025-08-06 15:14:38+00:00
First, the thing I'm not really seeing mentioned anywhere here in the HN comments is that a separate AirGradient sensor was #3 on the list of "recommended" sensors, and was specifically called "Best Budget Quality Air Monitor". I also can't seem to find this mentioned in the piece that you wrote, either. Why not highlight that success?

You write:

>How can a product be penalized for a failing display when another recommended product has no display?

This is an incredibly perplexing take. A display is subjective - whether or not the customer wants one is up to the customer. What the customer does want is a functional product, so regardless of what another product's features are, if that product functions as intended and yours does not, of course it's going to be recommended over yours.

>How can an indoor monitor without CO2 sensing - essential for understanding indoor air quality - be recommended over one that includes this crucial measurement?

Again - the products without CO2 sensors functioned as intended. It is indeed accurate that CO2 is one of the most critical metrics for assessing indoor air quality, but it goes back to my previous comment - perhaps the customer is more interested in PM2.5 indoors than CO2 for a specific reason. We don't know. Ultimately, the CO2-less sensors functioned as intended, whereas yours did not.

You go on to say:

>And specifically for situations like this: How would you want us to handle it? Should companies stay quiet when review methodology breaks down? Should we be more aggressive in calling this out? Or is transparency and open discussion the right approach?

Maybe focus less on one review and more on improving the product? As another comment states, you shipped a broken product and it suggests that there's a problem with your QA process. Further, you state early on:

>Let me be clear: this was a legitimate hardware failure, and we take full responsibility for it. As soon as we learned about the issue, we immediately sent replacement parts and a new unit, including repair instructions, as repairability is one of our core differentiators.

Let's maybe hear more about that. How/why did the hardware fail? Did you examine your QA process and make any improvements to it? Highlight these steps, as well as the "core differentiator" that is your repairability, rather than asking perplexing questions about why one reviewer didn't like your product.

As an "average Joe" customer in this area, the whole response feels excessive and... whiny (driven by the fact that you don't highlight that you did, in fact, have a product on the list that was well recommended). I don't say that to be terribly mean, it's just a bit off-putting. You're not necessarily wrong about product reviews like this in general, but like... who cares? Put the effort into making a solid product, not taking umbrage with one person's opinion.

There will be more reviews, and some of them will be negative. You're not going to be able to control perception and opinion, and nobody will ever get perfect marks from everyone. Learn to be OK with that.

Edit: I just saw your response about this not being a hardware failure when shipped. Still, the general concept of my point remains - detail what you're doing to determine how this happened and prevent it in the future, rather than griping about the review process. If "transparency is how [you] operate", lemme hear the deets about this issue!