While Bond's support agents have been very kind and helpful, you will need an abundance of patience to work with them as they triage the issues you will undoubtedly encounter with SelectBlinds customer service. Prepare yourself for days of back and forth as you attempt to integrate your new blinds with this under-developed platform. As an IT professional who installs custom AV & home-automation solutions on the side as a hobby, take it from me when I say that this selectConnect hub is not what it claims to be.
For what it's worth, the Bond mobile app, as well as their tech support strategy, both seem to be fairly well thought out. Everything that I have experienced so far hints that SelectBlinds, not Bond, have not actually put the time & energy into properly developing & testing his product. How this custom "built on Bond" hub is even on the market right now is mind-boggling, considering that *half of the advertised features do not even work*.
Here's a few highlights from my own personal experience:
- To pair your blinds to the hub, you need to use a six-digit number that SelectBlinds sends in your order email. Don't expect the number that they send you to actually be correct. Ask me how I know ?? (discovered by one of the better techs after a week of support ticket conversations)
- Once the *correct* remote number is added in the app, half of the features do not actually work. For the features that do work, they're mapped to the wrong buttons in the app.
- For my particular blinds, pressing the open button doesn't actually open the blinds, but rather tilts the blinds up about 1/4 of an inch. It takes about 8 "open" button presses to have any meaningful effect on how much light is let into the room. Note that other Bond integrations actually have a tilt button, as well as open/close buttons that control the height. It's not that the button isn't available in the platform, it's just that SelectBlinds has tilt up/down incorrectly mapped to open/close (height).
- The same is true for the close button, as it is also incorrectly mapped and tilts the blinds in the opposite direction. As there seems to be some slack that is place in the line when tilting in one direction vs the other, it takes about 5 button presses in the opposite direction before the blinds start to tilt the other way. Just like the remote, expect a lot of tapping if you value tilting your shutters more than fully opening or closing your blinds.
- The Bond app can only schedule fully opening and fully closing the blinds, either all the way up or all the way down. This means you can forget about scheduling to have your blinds tilt open or close, while having them remain at the same height, it's just not possible. I was hoping I could somehow use the incorrect tilt/height commands to my advantage and actually schedule tilting the blinds open or closed, but the schedule system is designed so that it only send a single command. For me, that means I can have my blinds tilt open or closed 1/4" a single time on a schedule. Great ??
Clunky interface, incorrect mappings, and support nightmares aside, this single oversight on scheduling I think has me the most frustrated. It's the only real use-case that I can think of on why anyone would really want to purchase a hub vs just using the remote. In the morning, tilting the blinds open to let light in, while not raising them all the way up seems like a natural use-case, one that I would even argue is most desired scenario. At night, closing the shutters entirely for privacy also seems like a no-brainer.
Overall I would think twice before purchasing this hub or any motorized blinds that are marketed by SelectBlinds as being compatible with it. I naively assumed that all of the features that are listed on the motorized blinds that I purchased would work, and I spent a premium on both the blinds and the hub because of that. I was wrong!
Would you recommend this site to a friend? No
Who measured your window for this product Self
Who installed this product Self
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes
/
No
SELECTBLINDS
September 01, 2023 at 10:51 AM
Hello Jared,
I apologize because you had a negative experience with us due to your SelectConnect Bridge not working the way you expected. Our goal is to provide a positive user experience, so any feedback given is greatly appreciated.