Pitboss Grills

Pit Boss Grills requires an account on their servers to access features of the grill remotely.

Nowhere on their website or packaging is the requirement to sign up for an account before remotely controlling or monitoring your grill disclosed. Their own video titled "How to setup and connect your Pit boss using the new Pit Boss app" omits the fact you need to tie a portion of your smokers functionality to their servers.

The first time you are notified of the account requirement is after installing and opening the app then clicking Grills (to connect to the grill 2 feet away). This is likely after a few hours of assembly when people are just wanting to do a burn-off and test things out.

Page after page of 1 star reviews for the app do little good when in all likeliness they would never be seen until after the unit has already been purchased. You can load up a shopping cart full of items as "guest" in the application after declining to create an account so it seems they have decided to wall off functionality behind an advertising engine.

The grills themselves seem solidly built and work well with the onboard control panel. It just feels scummy and a bit bait-and-switch to bring home a $1K pellet smoker only to be prompted to sign up for yet another account to be able to use all the advertised features. If a $50 router will broadcast an interface to log into and access/configure parameters and monitor traffic without signing up for an account with the manufacturer, it is unacceptable for a device like this to hold functionality hostage.