The Tin Can phone is designed to be a simple and screen-free way for children to connect with friends and family. But since Christmas morning, when many families unwrapped and installed the retro, landline-style phones, network issues have left many users unable to make or receive calls.
“Ultimately, Christmas Day overwhelmed us,” says Tin Can cofounder and CEO Chet Kittleson. “We spent months preparing for it, and we just didn’t get it all right.”
Tin Can customers on social media including Reddit and Instagram have reported a variety of issues both making and receiving calls with the devices. Some new users also experienced trouble setting up their accounts and activating their phones, which is normally done using a parent’s smartphone. The setup issues have now been resolved, Kittleson says, but he confirms network instability following an unprecedented influx of new customers continues to make the phone service itself unreliable for many.
“No matter how much you stress test and load test and all the rest, you just don’t know exactly how a service is going to perform under a new amount of pressure,” Kittleson says. “The growth we experienced literally within an hour was like nothing I’ve been through before.”
Tin Can offers a free plan that enables calls to other Tin Can devices, as well as a paid “party line” plan that allows calls to and from ordinary phone numbers preapproved by a parent. All types of incoming and outgoing calls, including emergency calls to 911, are potentially affected by the network issues, Kittleson says. And while he declined to provide Fast Company with an estimate of when service will be fully restored—“I don’t want to overpromise and underdeliver”—the company has pledged not to charge paying customers until the network is reliable once more.
Kittleson says his team is working around the clock to fix the issue, well-aware that the outage means children being unable to connect with friends and loved ones. Even his own family has had trouble with a Tin Can phone.
The Tin Can devices, which connect via the internet rather than the traditional phone network, have been promoted as a way for children to be able to connect with friends and family as they did in the landline era. Kids can use the devices to stay connected without having to be equipped with their own smartphones or risk exposure to the spam and scam calls ubiquitous on other phones today. (Tin Can may soon face competition, with kids’ device maker Pinwheel on January 5 announcing plans to launch a similar device in April).
The company has been updating customers on the issues via Instagram, email, and a status page, and social media feedback so far appears to be a mix of frustration and patient acceptance from fans of the device—or at least the concept. Many new customers who received Tin Can phones for the holidays likely have yet to build routines around the devices due to the outage, and the company has postponed shipping a next batch of phones until April, Kittleson says. He declined to specify how many new customers activated the devices over the holidays, though he says there were “a lot.”
Tens of thousands of Tin Can devices used the network without a problem for 14 months prior to Christmas, according to the company. And while some customers are evidently frustrated, Kittleson is optimistic that fans will stick with the Tin Can product and service once the outage is resolved.
“I think we have an audience that generally believes in the mission, believes in what we’re doing, and understands we just went through a pretty massive shift,” Kittleson says. “And they know that we’re working really, really hard to both let them know what’s going on and to resolve the issues.”