Planetwatch VS Awair
What happened, whose fault was it & what next...
Planetwatch (PW) is a french company building a global network of air quality sensors with the goal of improving enviromental monitoring & protecting public health. Any sensor that sends valid data to PW gets rewarded in $PLANET, that data is stored publicly on the blockchain.
PW outsources the physical sensors to individual companies, Awair was one of these. PW charge a license fee to deal with the data, to start earning crypto you need to buy the sensor from Awair (or other) and then buy the licence from Planetwatch separately.
It’s worth noting that the multi-year license was €70 and the device about £300, the ROI was probably easily within a year but it wasn’t exactly a get-rich-quick scheme.
On the 21st of Jan, PW announced they would be pausing the type 4 license (the one you need to earn with the Awair device) - this left some people upset as they were stuck with devices yet no way to earn.
The announcement only gave 7 days notice, relevant when the shipping time for Awair is anywhere between 30-90 days. Shortly after, on March the 30th Planetwatch announced they would terminate their Awair partnership on April the 1st, just a few days away.
Awair claims PW had exceeded their data allowance and that they did not respond to emails to discuss this. PW say there was no data limit specified in the contract they signed and that Awair was reacting to them pausing the license sales in Jan.
So whose fault was it? Without seeing the contract or being privy to the internal discussions we will never know. But at the end of the day both companies did their customers wrong:
Awair hiked the price of their devices over 2x and continued to grow their long backlog of orders despite knowing their partnership with PW was flopping - in total they sold 40,000 devices to PW customers.
PW sold their licenses in varying lengths of time and have not offered any refund (it would tank the price $PLANET). Some people have purchased 3-year devices to use with a device that no longer works, deeming both products useless.
PW has offered a small gesture of $PLANET rewards for 30 days (worth a total of about $15) while they figure out a "long term solution".
Awair refuses to refund opened items or anything that arrived past 30 days. Some Reddit users have had success with a chargeback on their credit/debit card due to the product not being as described (They clearly advertised the PW partnership on their site).
So to conclude, if you recently brought a sensor from Awair and a license from PW, unlucky. (I did too) Try and return the device if unopened or contact your bank for a chargeback. Open a support ticket with PW to claim your PLANETS then just wait to see what they announce.