An Arizona family who recently purchased a Bluetooth-enabled spa believes that its speaker has been hijacked.
Erica Trocino, who has never had a spa before, fell in love with her new tub, which she uses to decompress after a stressful day at work.
She and her husband bought the “Wellis Spa” complete with a Bluetooth speaker, which they can connect to their smart phones and play music.
At first, it worked perfectly. But after some time, the speaker developed a mind of its own, playing strange sounds at random times in the day. Sometimes the speaker broadcast static. Other times, it played music they don’t listen to, along with movie and video game sounds.
The noises were loud enough to hear from inside the house, and it happened day or night.
“It’s like a bassy noise, because when the lid’s closed the noise kinda bounces off the top,” said David Trocino, Erica’s husband. “My son is good at hearing it. ‘Hey dad, the hot tub is going!’” But it’s driving the family crazy. They think someone nearby has hijacked their speaker. The Bluetooth device requires a 4-digit PIN to connect to it, and the family thinks that whoever has hijacked the speaker has commandeered the PIN and is playing the noises on purpose.
“When we told the hot tub dealers, they laughed,” Erica said. “‘Oh my GOD, you must have made someone mad.’ I mean, that’s usually most people’s response like, ‘you must have made somebody mad,’ which is not fair to us because we have no idea who it is, what’s going on. The message is not being delivered.”
And kicking the hijacker off isn’t straightforward. The family has to unplug the breaker, plug it back in, and then quickly type in the pin before the hijacker can.
And they still haven’t been able to get any real help from the manufacturer.
They can’t simply change the PIN because it’s a universal passcode for that manufacturer’s specific spa, and is the same PIN for all the spas they sell throughout the country.
Erica says they will continue to look for a solution.
“They just think we’ll go away and be quiet and just get over it,” she said. “And we don’t feel like we should have to, because it’s an expensive piece of equipment.”
Photo: The Wellis Sound and Music (wellisblog.com).
