Here we are again, with yet another in our series of posts describing how in these here modern times you simply don’t actually own the things you’ve bought. This sort of thing takes many forms, of course. Sometimes the digital media you “bought” gets disappeared by a platform after a licensing deal runs out. Sometimes the hardware you bought turns into a relatively expensive brick because the company you bought it from decides to stop supporting those devices entirely. And, as Sony made famous with its PlayStation 3, sometimes a company simply decides to disappear a feature that was a selling point on a product on a whim.

Well, that last and oldest example appears to be the most analogous to what Oral-B just did to customers of some of its toothbrushes, which came with a charging base that you could connect to an Amazon Alexa.

That’s what’s happening to some who bought into Oral-B toothbrushes with Amazon Alexa built in. Oral-B released the Guide for $230 in August 2020 but bricked the ability to set up or reconfigure Alexa on the product this February. As of this writing, the Guide is still available through a third-party Amazon seller.

The Guide toothbrush’s charging base was able to connect to the Internet and work like an Alexa speaker that you could speak to and from which Alexa could respond. Owners could “ask to play music, hear the news, check weather, control smart home devices, and even order more brush heads by saying, ‘Alexa, order Oral-B brush head replacements,’” per Procter & Gamble’s 2020 announcement.

And then, in February of this year, Oral-B simply took that feature away. Where there once was an app that you could use to connect the Guide base to your Alexa, that feature in the app is no longer available. For those that had it previously setup with their Alexa, the base will work right up until the point that it drops its internet connection, after which it will no longer connect.

And if you thought refunds would be a thing here, it appears that’s not the case.

That’s a problem for Patrick Hubley, who learned that Oral-B discontinued Connect when his base inadvertently disconnected from the Wi-Fi and he tried using Connect to fix it. He told Ars Technica that when he tries using the Alexa wake word now, the speaker says, “I’m having trouble connecting to the Internet. For help, go to your device’s companion app.”

Hubley attempted but failed to get a refund or replacement brush through Oral-B’s support avenues. He says he will no longer buy Oral-B or Alexa products.

“I only purchased this toothbrush from Amazon because that was the only way to get the water-resistant Alexa speaker that I wanted for the bathroom. … I’m ready to be done with Alexa and Oral-B both.”

This is all starting to sound like the Spotify Car Thing story I linked to in the opener. If history is a guide, perhaps a good bout of public outrage from buyers of the Guide will spur Oral-B to reconsider offering refunds for a product it retroactively decided to make less useful after purchase.

But either way, there really should be some sort of consumer rights associated with not having a product that is purchased suddenly lose features long after purchase. In the meantime, I’ll just have to go back to singing in the shower, I suppose.

And here we go again. We’ve had many, many posts over recent years discussing how, in the digital age, you often don’t actually own what you’ve bought. And before the comments section gets filled with perplexed but rather educated folks talking about how the all these cases involve products in which the terms of service clearly outline that this is a license and not an actual product being bought, just stop. We all know that barely anyone reads a ToS these days and the confusion and anger that occurs in the public is proof of it. So clearly companies are not doing nearly enough to inform their customers of what they are actually purchasing. And if you think that problem is easily solved by staunchly insisting that Nancy down the street steep herself in legalese, then you’re completely divorced from reality.

Which brings us to Sony. Late last year we discussed how when Sony’s deal with the Discovery network ended, it caused a bunch of content to simply disappear from PlayStation owners who bought the content in the PS Store. Due to something completely outside of the public’s control, people who bought content, or thought that’s what they were doing, suddenly lost that content. Without refunds. Or an apology.

And now it’s happening all over again, due to Sony’s acquisition of Crunchyroll all the way back in 2021. Sony-owned Funimation is shutting down its app and website in April, with the company converting Funimation accounts to Crunchyroll accounts instead. All good right? Well…

Funimation, a Sony-owned streaming service for anime, recently announced that subscribers’ digital libraries on the platform will be unavailable after April 2. For years, Funimation had been telling subscribers that they could keep streaming these digital copies of purchased movies and shows, but qualifying it: “forever, but there are some restrictions.”

But soon, people who may have discarded or lost their physical media or lack a way to play DVDs and Blu-rays won’t have a way to access the digital copies that they were entitled to through their physical copy purchase.

Funimation’s announcement is roughly as tone-deaf as it gets. They explain all of these libraries won’t carry over to Crunchyroll because that platform doesn’t support Funimation’s digital content and then makes some vague comments about how Crunchyroll is continuously looking to make itself better. Which, whatever, because that doesn’t change the fact that a bunch of people bought a bunch of digital content that was pitched mostly as being theirs “forever” only to have it all nuked into oblivion as a result of a Sony acquisition. Good times.

Here again, we see that people don’t actually own what they’ve bought, much to their confusion.

Funimation’s support page for digital copies (which, as of this writing, says it hasn’t been updated in four years) notes that Funimation’s idea of forever includes restrictions and links to Funimation’s Terms of Use. Those terms state that Funimation can “without advance notice… immediately suspend or terminate the availability of the Service and/or content (and any elements and features of them), in whole or in part, for any reason.” It also says that the Funimation website, apps, service, and all of its content are owned by Funimation and its partners.

So even if you, understandably, thought you were buying a “forever” digital copy, the wordy truth is that you never really owned it. Yet, it wouldn’t be surprising to hear that someone relying on digital copies to preserve their purchased media didn’t properly understand (or read) those terms before discarding their physical copies.

Thanks for the money, suckers! Hope you enjoyed the years-long forever!