INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Image copyrightPetnetOwners of a device designed to release food for pets say their animals were left hungry during a week-long system
failure.Petnet allows owners to schedule and control feeding via a smartphone app.When the TheIndianSubcontinent contacted Petnet on its
advertised email address, the email bounced back with a delivery failure notice.One pet owner tweeted: "My cat starved for over a week",
while others complained about other hardware issues."My three Gen2 feeders constantly jam and won't dispense food," wrote another.Some
expressed relief that the feeders were now back online.Image copyrightPetnetPetnet has two Twitter accounts
The official one has not tweeted since 30 August 2019 but the support account issued four tweets between 14 and 21 February about the
problems experienced.In its first tweet it said a "system outage" was affecting second generation devices and asked customers not to switch
off their feeder even if it appeared to be offline.It said automatic feeds would "still dispense".Four days later, it tweeted again to say
it hoped to "release more information" soon.On 21 February it said smartfeeders were "returning online" and a "system reset" was in
progress.Some customers tweeting to the support account complained of not having received a response.The firm had faced similar problems in
rating of either one or two stars."As we go towards a more automated home you have to acknowledge that, somewhere along the line, things
will fall over," said Stuart Miles, founder of the tech site Pocket-Lint."Robots and automated systems have hiccups along the way, it's
something we need to get used to."
