I will confess:
Thought I would share today’s Dear Abby if you have not seen it.
Dang, there’s a number of us that Abby would say we have issues.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our first meeting of “Wyze Anonymous”. I’m carverofchoice, and I’m here to confess that I am a Wyze-aholic.
You see, I’ve fallen prey to their too-good-to-be-true prices with low-profit margins to make great tech affordable to all…too affordable if I am honest. I started with a smart scale and then a couple of cameras and some sensors but it didn’t stop there. My obsession with their affordable and feature-packed gadgets grew exponentially. It started innocently enough. I only planned to get a couple of things that I needed, but then I realized, I saved so much money compared to “the other guys” and got so much more from it that I felt I could spend what I saved on more stuff. In the beginning, my intermittent “hobby” was a soft and smooth flaxen cord. I even enjoyed it for social reasons, but it changed over time to become the heavy chains of pure dependency and addiction from which I lost all control. Before I knew it, I had smart locks and robot vacuum cleaners and nearly everything Wyze has ever made strewn around my entire house. I even bought their non-smart devices. I sought other Wyze-aholics like myself (–cough–cough-- @R.Good @spamoni ) to enable my addiction and pressure me into more compulsive purchases. We even played games with our addiction, like: who has the Wyze-est house, or the most Device App Badges. I mean, I even enabled other people, including pretending R.Good won some of the games. I even got others like @cyberdog_17 to become just as sick as me and my friends because misery loves company. Sometimes we bought things we didn’t need or couldn’t really use…like R.Good bought a Sprinkler controller without even having any sprinklers. and I bought a Neutral-wire dependent smart switch even though I didn’t have neutral wiring in my house! The pure insanity! I even bought a black V3 when it launched just to have one, with no idea where I would even use it since I had 40 other cameras setup already. I just couldn’t let my addiction group beat me in the Wyze-st home game. 
My addiction went so far that I eagerly awaited each new product announcement like a kid on Christmas morning, and I signed up as a Beta tester for the Beta App, and Beta Firmware, just to get the newest features sometimes. I even became a VOLUNTEER on their forums, helping and enabling others.
At first, my friends were amused by my smart home antics, but soon, they saw me transform into a walking Wyze billboard, constantly yapping about all the smart things I had, and the cool automations I enacted. I couldn’t stop myself from showing off my devices, automations, etc that controlled every aspect of my life.
My 16yo daughter absolutely hates my addiction, because she hasn’t been able to lie me to that “it wasn’t me” for several years now because she knows I can always verify, and now as a teenager it’s basically impossible for her sneak out of the house or sneak people into the house in the middle of the night without me knowing about it. How is a teenager supposed to have house parties while I’m away, or midnight pool parties? I’m basically ruining my daughter’s whole life!
Not to mention my toddlers…my 3yo doesn’t get to be terrified of monsters in the middle of night because she says her “dadda camera” keeps her safe and she can talk to me at any moment when she needs or wants me. I got my family TALKING to smart devices now, not just to other humans. What have I done? And they walk into rooms and things automatically turn on when they are there and off when they leave, and I’m making my whole family so spoiled and lazy by making life so easy! “Tough times create strong men, strong men create easy times, easy times create weak men, weak men create tough times.” So, I know I should let them grow up with tough times like conventional people, but with my addiction, I just can’t help myself.
The worst part is, I can’t resist the temptation to buy more. My obsession with Wyze has impacted my life in ways I never thought possible. My stress levels are so much lower because everywhere has security and on automatic schedules and letting me know only about things I think are the most important, while making other things available for my perusal if I need it/feel like it. I make all sorts of justifications like this to fuel my addiction and codependency.
My Wyze obsession has even completely flipped my understanding of statements like “you get what you pay for” which no longer means paying more is always getting something better, because my Wyze addiction showed me that paying more often just meant higher prices were just due to higher profit margins, and not higher quality, more features, or better reliability. I mean, my obsession does extend to other smart devices, and I have cameras and devices from several other companies too, but even with the expensive ones, I found none of them were really “better” than the low-margin Wyze devices. The grass isn’t actually greener on the other side in my experience (and I tried a lot). But yeah, you do get what you pay for elsewhere…higher profit margins elsewhere, no better functionality or features overall elsewhere (sometimes worse or different), but terrible communication and get completely ignored for any requests or suggestions, etc. elsewhere. You get what you pay for to me now just means a worse financial situation, fewer devices, often fewer features, etc. Here’s a summary of an unbiased comparison test article I read that illustrates a good example of my new excuse and justification I have for rethinking that phrase to further enable my addiction/obsession.
The effects of my obsession have gotten so bad that I have over 40 cameras and 300+ Wyze devices with no end in sight! Like Abby said:
[this] obsession is over the top. This isn’t normal behavior, and something may be wrong with [me].
The guy in the article only had half as many cameras as me, so if he was over-the-top, then I am “beyond extravagant, & excessively lavish”.
So, here I am, baring my soul to all of you, hoping that with your support, I can learn to increase my Wyze addiction, better PRETEND some semblance of normalcy (not actually obtain it), and maybe even have a few bucks left in my bank account (thanks to getting what I pay for (low-profit margins) at a more affordable rate than I would be paying otherwise). Thank you for listening.
Disclaimer: the above is mostly meant as entertainment/satire (please take it with a grain of humor), mingled with truth…just for the watercooler.
Reading the letter from UNDER A MICROSCOPE IN CALIFORNIA made think the guy is a typical Wyze user that like technology. Maybe the keeping logs part might need some explaining. It is possible he thinks family or neighbors are dealing drugs, stealing or infidelity. If this is the case, Dear Abby may have had a different response.
Yeah, the guy could easily have reasonable examples of his wife misrepresenting things.
For example, we keep several boxes of cat litter in our large furnace room. I have a camera watching them with a “person detection” notice on it so I can see when my daughter last went in there and scooped out the cat litter. If she doesn’t do it regularly, the cats will start going elsewhere, and that is a problem. So I indeed “track” how often she completes that chore, and Alexa even logs it for me in a scrollable log. So I can just pull up that camera on Alexa and view the Person detection routine log and see when or how often my daughter cleaned or replaced the litter. If I don’t check up on that, random places in our house will smell like urine or get defecated on, and that is a big problem. But if I “log” and check up on my daughter’s commitment to clean the cat litter regularly in order to keep her cats, then everything is fine. But my daughter could easily twist that around to say something creepy and controlling in a Dear Abby, when that spin on it would be misleading. Also, back in 2020 when she was younger, my daughter would lie about EVERYTHING and it got really out of hand. We struggled to convince her it was okay to be honest about things like breaking something or not paying attention or whatever. She wouldn’t even believe us that we knew something was her or knew she was lying about things. This is one reason I first got indoor cameras, to help break her lying habit. It only took a couple of times of pointing out that I can just look it up on the camera for her to start actually telling us things. It made a huge difference and indoor cameras were not needed after that. She soon realized that she could be honest with us about things, like unintentionally breaking something, or not paying attention and it was okay to discuss it with us without lying and denying all responsibility. It made a huge positive difference with several things. Also, she kind of likes being able to use the cameras as an excuse for why she can’t give in to peer pressure to “sneak out” or whatever. We’re fairly lenient with her at 16yo now, but the cameras can be used as a peer-pressure easy-out in several cases. We’ve told her she’s allowed to blame us saying no if she doesn’t want to do something with friends, and when she doesn’t want to do something, she can always convincingly say to her friends she can’t sneak out or do it anyway. Such things have a lot of benefits.
As for the neighbors, there could also be a back history there warranting scrutiny. I can think of several examples. My in-laws had a neighbor that was mad them for not cutting down one of the trees in my in-law’s backyard, so he constantly harrassed them and tried to get them in trouble in every way possible, including lying about them, calling the city and reporting alleged violations of anything and everything. Basically trying to blackmail them into cutting down their tree to make the harassment stop. The City employees got so used to it, they would just stop by my in-laws and say “I know it’s BS again, but we’re required to stop by anyway” and they’d come in and just socialize and eat snacks with my in-laws every time they got a complaint. The neighbor even started throwing dog poo and trash into their yard, and all sorts of weird things. I don’t know about you, but I’d be paranoid and logging my neighbor’s activities too, at least to file a lawsuit or countersuit at some point. There are a million things that would totally justify what the dude could be doing and why and we have no context or his side of the story. He might not be so abnormal after all TBH.
I didn’t need Dear Abby to tell me I have “issues”. I already knowed that! 
And, I embrace them!
There is no way you just outed my addiction like this!!! 
I learned the hard way that this bunch IS NOT the crew to talk you OUT of a purchase no matter how irresponsible LMAOOOOOOOO here I am 80 cameras later and an ungodly amount of the smart home category of products 
I must confirm that I too have an Addiction as @carverofchoice so eloquently pointed out. 
I even have 2 large drawers of Wyze products that I still either need to install, purchased as backups, or purchased because it intrigued me even though I had no real use.
This addiction is also my hobby and something that keeps me engaged in IoT and technology, even though I have 38+ years in tech and currently still working, this is just another avenue for me to stay engaged.
Yep, I even got my Kids, Nephews, and In-laws hooked.
No Regrets.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our second meeting of “Wyze Anonymous”. I’m such a Wyze-aholic, I don’t remember my name, and I’m here to confess.
You see, I’ve leaped on to the wagon for their so-good-its-true prices with low-profit margins to make great tech affordable to all…oh-so affordable since I am honest. I didn’t start with the smart scale -as it didn’t exist. But instead, a couple of cameras and those wonder-some V1 sensors and happily didn’t stop there. Yep, like others, my obsession with their affordable and feature-packed gadgets grew exponentially. It didn’t start innocently; I was plodding my empire early as I began growing my Snidely Whiplash mustache. I planned to get a couple thousand (Wa-ha-ha-ha-ha) Wyze things and to grow my empire street by street until I owned the city. I realized; I spent so much money compared to “the other Wyze-aholics guys” that I had to start an Instagram channel. However, no one told me I had to keep adding photos and videos to generate revenue.
In the beginning, my intention was to take over the world. I did find joy in the social interactions on the Wyze user forum. but it changed over time to become what I lived for and from which I lost all control. Before I knew it, I was buying Wyze products everywhere I found them. I bought turquoise paint by the 5-gallon bucket and started painting my skateboard, my Kenworth, my airplane, fire hydrants, street signs, utility poles, my dog and cat, my neighbor’s teenager. I have painted nearly everything Wyze colors that’s been strewn around my entire house. I even bought their Wyze car, and still can’t get it out of the box. I sought other Wyze-aholics like myself (–cough–cough—Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, and Mark Zuckerberg to enable my addiction and pressure me into more empire-building purchases (Wa-ha-ha-ha-ha). We even played games with our addiction, like: who can spot the salami on their Wyze cam, or the Most-Devious-Device-Install Badges; or how many different ways can people misspell Wyze. I mean, I even started at the far end of the street and worked backwards sneaking in late at night outside the Detection Zones and installed new Wyze Cameras for neighbors that didn’t yet know they wanted them. I left their Wyze login and password in a Wyze cam box taped over the button on their new Wyze doorbell. Wa-ha-ha-ha-ha, as my empire grows. Next week we start on Chicago.
Sometimes we bought things we didn’t need or couldn’t really use just to see the pretty Wyze boxes delivered. I bought the Wyze vacuum created a rule to run only on AMA days at Wyze. And I bought a Neutral-wire dependent smart switch and pleaded with the fulfillment center to remove the switch from the box before they shipped, so I would have something to complain about. The pure genius! I even bought the Multiple-V3 installed Wyze Fire Pit just to have one, with no idea where I would even use it since I live on a houseboat with my 40 turquoise painted cats. I just couldn’t let my addiction group beat me in the Wyze-color home game. Ohhhhh the joy of Wyze:
My addiction went so far that I eagerly awaited each new Ford or GM product announcement like a kid on Christmas morning, so I could paint it turquoise. I even signed up to be VOLUNTEER READING the forums, wishing I could spare the time from empire expansion to help others.
One bonus I didn’t predict, didn’t see coming. The wife left me. But its okay, she wasn’t my wife. Can’t remember where she came from and had been trying to get her to leave for the longest. Other than that, there is no worst part.
At first, second, and third, my friends thought I was nuts, that I was paranoid. I explained every day to them with hundreds of texts, “you would be paranoid too, if everybody was out to get you”. Pretty soon, they agreed. Yes, they finally agree. Like Abby said: “Distrust but verify.”
You guys are totally weird and getting weirder by the day. Track this, junkies 
Withholding affection 
until you start reforming yourselves.
Pot, meet Kettle.
Case in point:
From your post history though, it was difficult to pick just one.
Ok, challenge. I will say nothing but straight technical things for a week. You turn off 20% of your prime cams during the same period? Takers?
I thought not. 
I have so many overlapping cameras that turning off a few is no big deal. So you’re on froggie…
Kinda lawyerly, but ok, you’re on. That’s one real man outta the bunch o’ya.
I have 10 cameras in my front yard group. So keeping with your 20% is two. I give you three. So, nothing but technical talk from you till after 1445 PDT next Friday - 11 Aug. 2023
OK everyone, hold peeppeer to it! His idea…
Well done! A great start! 
Sorry, I can’t play. I don’t have any cams from Amazon.
Same, which is why I choose to communicate with the likes of this group and not Abby. 
Can I add 20% more cam’s?
