A beagle mix named Max warned his owners when the family’s Google home hub started burning in the middle of the night, and they were able to stop it. Andy Smith, of Nuneaton, Warwickshire, was roused from his sleep by the 15-month-old pup in the early hours of the morning…
He went downstairs at 4.30am, thinking the dog may have needed to go to the bathroom, when he realized something wasn’t quite right…
After walking in the door, he was met with the scent of burning plastic and found that his Google Home hub was sizzling on his bar counter.
Mr. Smith acted immediately and disconnected the device…
“The dog came into our room in the early hours of the morning, at half past four o’clock, and we believed he wanted to go outside.”
So I came down and noticed a burning plastic smell, which I later discovered was emanating from the Google building, which had begun to smoke and melt…
On the bar, it was sitting on a leather fire retardant surround that had burnt through. Even though there wasn’t a fire at that moment, if Max hadn’t awakened us up when he did, there very certainly would have been.”
He said that a two-month legal battle with Google ensued.
“I got in touch with Google the next day,” he stated. It was a nightmare come true. They requested that I return it, which I duly did.
To begin with, they misplaced it once it arrived at the plant. I followed up with them hundreds of times over the course of seven or eight weeks.
Then, once they tracked it down, they came back to me and claimed that their engineers had looked into it and determined that it was an external problem that had nothing to do with Google.
“They were essentially accusing me, yet the item had been sitting in the same location on my bar for 18 months before that.” As a result, I requested a copy of the engineers’ report, which they refused to provide.
“They gave me a replacement, but it’s still wrapped in the box, so I’m not sure I can trust them at this point.” Their level of customer service has been appalling to say the least.
It took me eight weeks to track them down, just for them to blame me in the end.”
“Had Max not awakened us up, it may have resulted in a fire and everything would have been different,” says the author “Andy shared his thoughts.
“The following day, he was lavished with attention by his ladylove – snacks, walks, the whole – he pretended it was Christmas!”
