Those users don’t send usage data back to Haier that they can then sell to other companies
Yes, but without the plug in, they wouldn’t buy the product to give the data. It’s circulat logic on their part.
that, and I can imagine they fear a giant wave of support tickets from people using HA and having problems
The app already exists, so anyone who has it, will keep it.
Anyone in the market to purchase will now avoid. Their suit will cost more sales than the app, which may have actually generated sales by existing.
It depends. My HVAC controller is a similar story to this one, and a dev has put together a plugin for HA that achieves the same thing. But it makes the exact same calls to the cloud service the OEM uses, so I’m certain they’re getting the same usage data from me, regardless of the software means I use to make those calls.
