I’m an early adopter for Wyze products and tech in general. Have 20+ cameras at our homes + businesses.
Bought a bird feeder with high hopes. Didn’t work as advertised. No problem.
The solar panel wire got chewed up by an animal rendering the camera ineffective. Really shotty design for the feeder and configuration to hide wires.
I’m on my 8th new Wyze rep for a support ticket and have resorted to Twitter DMs to move things along.
All of the canned responses from Wyze team members lack compassion and empathy. They offered me a $10 gift card.
Cameras provide security for our family. I’m 11 days into a support ticket. No resolution and repeated attempts to escalate to supervisor are not recognized. Each time a new Wyze rep gets on the thread and asks the same questions over again and offers the same no solution.
This is frustrating and we are about the move to another brand. Look forward to your suggestions as Wyze consumers. Love the brand, but this process of getting assistance is absolutely broken and completely lacks empathy.
Wyze failed when they changed their business model back in the V2 days, last cams I bought were V3’s…
When the last V3 dies, that will be when I am completely done. It seems in my case most V3’s die of foggy lens syndrome when the seal goes bad and they suck water.
Shame they didn’t fix the lens issue and that problem is now with the newer versions too…
Reolink for the win, zero issues with that brand for me
It is really frustrating to unwind years of an ecosystem but if I can’t get real support for a minor issue, not sure how they will support with a major one.
Going automated with AI responses and no escalation opportunities will really turn off users. I’m sharing this to save someone else the pain.
I’ve got the patience and I’ve communicated effectively. Have all of the screenshots and have requested exec management be involved for my case and to learn for future users. They have it clear,.they don’t care.
They will lire you with reduced pricing cameras but fail you when it comes to supporting them. If you watch their earlier videos of David vs Goliath mentality, it was a brand that one can get behind and support. Thousands of dollars later, they can’t even address minor support issues effectively.
I post this to warn you. Great products and improving UI, but as a consumer, buyer beware. They will leave you hanging.
Welcome to the forums @devdugal
Sorry to hear that squirrels are vandalizing your stuff.
It sounds like you would like Wyze to replace the equipment damaged by the squirrels (something that would generally not be considered to be their fault by most companies).
Which brand are you thinking of moving to that would have squirrel vandalism covered as part of the warranty? It’s my understanding that even most home owner’s insurances won’t cover squirrel damage, and I didn’t know any companies do, so I’m curious if anyone knows of any.
I’m glad to hear that even though they are saying squirrel damage isn’t covered under the warranty they still tried to help give you some compensation, though I can understand it is frustrating that it’s not enough to get a replacement solar panel, and it looks like the solar panels are currently sold out on their website too.
Sorry to hear of your frustrations. I can see why people hate squirrels if they are doing these kinds of things to them. I’ve always thought they were cute and wished I had some at my current location, but I would probably feel quite differently if they were constantly biting my camera wires like this and causing other damage. I’d probably start putting up critter guards, cable covers, ultra-sonic repellents, motion activated sprinklers, scarecrows and other visual deterrents, etc like I hear some people implement to keep the cute little monsters away.
@StevenA, about 14 years back Squirrels chewed my car wiring. My car insurance covered it under comprehensive (Thank goodness), paid my 100 dollar deductible for a 1500.00 re-wiring job.
Then a year after that a mama squirrel made a nest in my vintage 80’s chevy caprice (no where near show worthy), and I had to evict her and the babies. No damage done, but the babies went with a rehabber when mama didn’t come back for them once we moved the nest.
No real problems since, aside from them raiding my bird feeders.
Funny, I have a garage, but it only fits 1 vehicle and at the time I had 2.
Everyone thinks I’m silly for keeping full coverage on my cars… But… It’s served me well over the years. I’ve hit 5 deer, a raccoon, and had hail damage 5 times. Worth every penny. Lol
No guarantee, mice and other critters like to get into warm engines and make a mess too, and they can find their way in around the garage doors. I had a rat chew the vent tube on my truck’s gas tank (in the driveway, not garage) this past summer. Luckily a $2.50 fix but took hours to track it down, was throwing an EVAP leak code which is one of the hardest to narrow down where in the damn system it is. Was hidden way up on top of the gas tank, had to make a homebrew smoke machine to finally find it.
The joys of having crunchy neighbors that like having compost bins.
homies -
chill out. my primary concern is not the chewed up wire. i’m good with that. it’s not the remedies or the actual amounts. apology for the confusion.
love the brand. love the products.
my pain point is trying to get help via ticketing in the event an escalation is requested. it is a frustrating process.
I would never consider not having full coverage. One of my cars is 16 years old and still quite valuable, but when I get insurance quotes they default to just liability coverage and nothing else. Um, no thanks guys.
That being said, I’ve never made a claim since I do my own repairs and making a claim (at least in my state) would raise my rates by hundreds for at least 6 years, so unless it is major (and I haven’t had anything major, knock on wood) I just fix it myself or pay out of pocket.
My neighbors had their wiring chewed up, I’m not sure if they went through insurance or not for that. My rat chewing incident turned out to be minor and just needed a cheap section of fuel line to repair.
The coyotes and owls keep the rats pretty well at bay around here (never saw a single one before COVID, but when the restaurants closed they all branched out and found new sources of food). Now everyone has compost bins and that’s keeping them around.
Unfortunately a lot of people around here think the solution is poison, which kills the owls and coyotes and just makes the problem worse.
If you can be more specific on what needs to be escalated other than the wire damage, we may have some suggestions. What do you need help with that the public facing support people aren’t resolving for you, but should?
In some situations we volunteers can potentially get something escalated, but only when it is glaringly obvious support gave false information or didn’t follow the policy, etc.
I use snap traps, I don’t do the bait because we have owls that do a great job of catching them and I don’t want to kill them off. Every week on the night before garbage pickup I put them up against my fence on the other side of the neighbors’ compost bins. That way I can just drop them in the trash and they get picked up the next morning. It used to be they’d be full every week, now I catch one every few weeks, so I’ve made progress. During COVID one winter I caught probably 30 in 3 months.
Bastards seem to have learned that peanut butter equals death, so now I stop by McDonalds later at night and ask if they have any burgers that are past their time and are going to be tossed. Rats love junk food too. Freeze the extra and microwave like 1/4 of one and that fills the traps for the night. I put a little fence around the traps to keep the downstairs dog out of them and also the possums/racoons/skunks (which don’t bother anyone, don’t want to crack their heads open).
My neighbor’s cat is great at catching everything except the rats, these are too big for her (though I’m assuming she probably does get some of the smaller ones).
I have looked at the electrified traps (which seem to be hit or miss) and also the ones that have a compressed air driven piston inside a tube (very expensive but look to be pretty effective). But for now the snap traps do their job.
One of the neighboring cities has these ones at all the schools that are the air driven piston ones and the body falls into a compartment and sends an alert via wifi to tell them to empty it. Maybe Wyze should develop one with a cam in it