1st Mate Man Overboard Marine Monitoring Product

I own a boat with twin 2023 Mercury 150 engines and have previously added a VesselView, various harnesses and SC1000 gauges. My boat dealer is hours away and the boat stays in the water so I maintain everything myself. When I found the wireless 1st Mate system with Mercury SmartCraft integration, I reviewed the supporting installation information prior to purchasing and couldn't believe how simple it was especially since the system goes beyond the kill switch with the TDS functionality. I ordered the unit and installed it within minutes. My key switches and junction boxes are all easily accessible under the dash and this unit pulls power directly from the Mercury harness so installation is a breeze. Before I drilled the holes for the hub, I figured I better test it. I downloaded the app, signed up for the account, and went to add my vessel. It initially started to add the hub but the app crashed on iOS 18.5 (iPhone). After restarting the app, the app will not discover the hub when trying to add a vessel, despite the hub having a flashing green wireless light (meaning it has no existing connections and is ready to connect). I removed the 1st Mate device from my bluetooth list, rebooted the phone, deleted/reinstalled the app, rebooted the hub by removing the harness (per 1st Mate's troubleshooting article), all to no avail. I contacted support and received a response 1st thing Monday morning. Their initial reply: take it to a dealer for warranty. I explained I didn't buy it from a dealer. They asked some questions, confirmed the hub serial number was showing as tied to my account, but said if the hub isn't showing under my vessels in the app, the unit is defective. They would not RMA the device directly, despite it being purchased from a Mercury authorized retailer. They have zero phone support, and they offered no way to reset the unit other than removing power, and never replied to me requesting them to remove the hub serial number from my account so I could retry the initial setup. I returned it and won't be purchasing another one. I simply can't trust a product that has the ability to permanently lock my motors (TDS function) with a company that has email only support and won't stand behind their product. I also don't know of any dealer that is going to RMA a consumer installed accessory they didn't sell. Red flags with this product everywhere. Avoid at all costs. There are other solutions that are independent of a cell phone app and that have actual support.