Mastodawn

Sylvia Jul 19, 2025

I would like to urge my followers to strongly avoid #TRMNL.

TRMNL calls itself "unbrickable" and Open Source, telling you you can host your own server and that basically everything is fully supported: https://web.archive.org/web/20250718183453/https://docs.usetrmnl.com/go/diy/byos. This is not true. The only thing a local server can do is send images to the device and *proxy from their proprietary server*: https://web.archive.org/web/20250718062040/https://github.com/usetrmnl/byos_hanami/issues/178.

To add insult to injury, TRMNL is trying to refuse me a refund, in gross violation of EU law.

#UseTRMNL #DoNotUseTRMNL

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Atemu Mar 25

@SylvieLorxu

I'm not sure I'm following. According to them, there is an option to proxy their hosted offerings in order to serve it *in addition* to your own content. That sounds quite reasonable to me?

Are you implying that there is no option to render arbitrary web content locally and serve it to the device as the dev claims to be doing with their own device at home?

The lacking return policy is not great but you are importing this from the U.S.; EU commerce law simply does not apply.

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Sylvia Mar 25

@Atemu Did you read the other messages where I went into more details on how this is a bait and switch?

Tl;dr: They promise a full open source ecosystem, but all the plugins are proprietary and locked to their cloud. You can do *nothing* without their server except render some plain text.

And no, if you sell your products to an EU citizen, you have to follow EU law.

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Atemu Mar 26

@SylvieLorxu

RE: consumer rights on import: Do you have a source on that?

My current understanding is that region-specific law can only apply to entities with legal presence in that region. In the case of an import, the other party has – by definition – no such presence; that's why it's an import.

The GDPR is an EU law that claims world-wide effect but that was/is actually a hugely controversial novum and the debate on the effectiveness of that is far from settled AFAIK.

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Sylvia

@Atemu https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/shopping-consumer-rights/index_en.htm#bought-outside-eu

"if you buy from a non-EU online trader who has specifically targeted EU consumers you should also be covered by EU rules"

Given they clearly ship directly to Europe and offer local payment methods (such as IDEAL) I argue they target EU consumers. This is not some dropshipping operation.

Regardless, their BYOS page *clearly and explicitly* stated plugins and recipes to be fully supported with no sidenotes so expecting them available should not be unreasonable.