Best Buy may owe you money if you have Insignia Connect appliances

The Insignia Connect line is coming to a close

By Alina Bradford Published September 7, 2019

Best Buy Black Friday — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Bad news for anyone who has Insignia Connect products. On November 6, 2019, Best Buy will be shutting down its Insignia Connect platform. This means if you have an Insignia Connect appliance or device it will become decidedly less useful, and, in some cases, completely useless.

How big of an impact this makes on Insignia Connect users depends on the smart appliance or device. If you have the smart home freezer and use features that require the Insignia Connect app, those features aren’t going to work anymore. Sure, your appliance will still have basic functionality. For example, the Insignia freezer will still freeze and the display will still show the temperature, it just won’t have the “smart” features you probably bought the appliance for in the first place. The Wi-Fi Smart Plug and Smart Plug with Metering and the Wi-Fi Smart Light Switch will continue to work, but you won’t be able to change settings or schedules. Hopefully, you never have to change them. Some smart plugs will still function like normal if you have the Apple HomeKit as long as you use the HomeKit app, though. If you own the Insignia Wi-Fi Camera, on the other hand, you’re out of luck. The camera will completely cease to function and you won’t be able to access using the Insignia app after November 4, 2019.

Recommended Videos

The good news is the company is offering compensation for discontinued Insignia Connect products with e-gift cards. Best Buy states that they won’t compensate you to have the in-wall switches uninstalled from your home, though. The gift cards will probably be Best Buy gift cards, and if you don’t trust the company after this, a gift card probably isn’t the best compensation. They also don’t state how much you will be compensated or when you will receive the card on the Insignia site.

If an e-card sounds good, you can go to the Insignia Connect Product Validation Site to see if your appliances and devices qualify for compensation. You’ll need the serial number to check for eligibility. Questions about the end of the Connect line are answered on the Insignia FAQs page, or you can call their helpline at 800-568-2054 7 AM CDT to 7 PM CDT.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Alina Bradford has been a tech, lifestyle and science writer for more than 20 years. Her work is read by millions each month…

Computing

Best Buy’s new retail store looks like a true Apple Store competitor

A concept drawing of a Best Buy small format store.

Best Buy has unveiled a new digital-first small-store format in Monroe, North Carolina. Unlike the retailer's usual mega stores, this new store is only 5,000 square feet and features finely curated display models laid out in a spacious interior, not unlike an Apple Store.

Best Buy hopes customers will use their smartphones to place their orders by scanning QR codes next to display products and paying for it in the app.

Smart Home

Should you buy a smart robot mop? Pros and cons

irobot roomba spraying water on wood floor with vacuum Roomba in dock behind it.

Vacuum bots like the Roomba have become a common sight in homes of all kinds -- but they have a cousin, a lesser-known robot cleaner with a different purpose. These smart mop robots clean hardwood surfaces with a cleaning spray mixture and pads. While they don’t handle debris, they are designed for hardwoods, vinyl, and other materials you would otherwise clean with a mop.

You can find these robot mops from the same brands that produce the vacs, including iRobot, Ecovacs, and Bissell. Sometimes they are even bundled together in one package to accommodate different types of flooring in the same house. But are the mop bots really worth it? Let’s go over the pros and cons before you buy.
Pros of a robot mop

Computing

Want a GPU from Best Buy? Get ready for a $200 paywall

Three GPUs from the Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 Series.

Best Buy used to rank highly amongst reliable sources of the best graphics cards, but this could be about to change -- or at the very least, it just got a whole lot more expensive.

The latest drop of Nvidia RTX 30-series graphics cards was locked to only include customers who purchased a membership to the Best Buy Totaltech program. The membership costs $199 per year.