Friends Don't Waste Friends' Time

It’s clear to me that the Wyze business plan (lowest price possible, highest customer interaction, i.e., make friends of your customers) effectively supports the low price of the hardware by leveraging the free labor of its customer base in the extensive troubleshooting (development) of its products.

So you are induced to purchase by the initial low price, are seduced by the friendly responsiveness to “help out” in product development/troubleshooting. You-can-pay-me-now (the real cost of a finished product) or you-can-pay-me-later (in labor to troubleshoot an unfinished product.)

That’s fine, it only takes a little reflection to suss this out, and as most of us are probably adults, we can make an informed decision to stay-or-go thereafter. A free market.

But

Friends don’t treat Friends like this:

I’ve had two customer service interactions whereby I simultaneously opened a thread on this forum and a ticket with Wyze Support.

1 - Cloud clip | SD event: Same trigger?

In the first case, I think I asked the right question (as have others) and Wyze never stepped in to officially dispel the confusion by providing an informed answer.

This confusion was only amplified by the response from Wyze Support: The advice was inconsistent and contradictory to the practical experience of Wyze users.

2 - App Crash accessing Account > App Settings

In the second case, I asked the right question (about a problem I discovered only I was having) and was given incorrect information by Wyze Support. I persisted independently and solved the problem.

So here’s the constructive criticism:

MAKE KNOWN OFFICIALLY ALL PRODUCT FLAWS AND INCONSISTENCIES so that motivated customers can reference a list and avoid wasting their time troubleshooting a problem already known to Wyze.

MAKE SURE WYZE SUPPORT IS WELL-INFORMED SO THEY CAN PROVIDE CORRECT AND CONSISTENT GUIDANCE TO CUSTOMERS.

No one likes to waste time - or to have their time wasted - unnecessarily. To put it into the vernacular of friends: a friend who asks you to help them move is prepared to move when you arrive. They respect your time. The good will generated out of this is, how-should-I-say… INCALCULABLE. :slight_smile:

Friends don’t waste friends’ time.

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There have been multiple requests for a public-facing bug list. Interestingly, the Service Status & Known Issues page was updated 2 days ago, but is completely outdated. It would be extremely helpful for those trying to help others to be able to reference known issues. Now, it’s ‘well we heard this’ or ‘we think that’.

I do think Wyze gets a lot of goodwill by listening to their users, but letting people pound their heads rediscovering known issues lets much of that goodwill go up in smoke.

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They may be suffering an embarrassment of riches at the moment (too much new free labor to value it dearly?) When their rate of growth begins to flatten (if ever, it might grow to the sky!) they may begin to make analyses they aren’t motivated to make right now.*

* Although forward-looking statements contained in this post are based upon what a customer of the Company believes are reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements.

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I’m an adult and have a professionally installed security camera system.
I did my research and purched Wyze cameras after doing so.
I have less problems with my Wyze cameras than the professionally installed system. It’s easier to use and is much more reliable.
I don’t think anything is perfect and for a startup to deliver this good of a product is truly impressive. I expect with the recent investment it will only get better.

I appreciate the Road maps which allow us to vote on what we would like to see next. If there is anything lacking, I would definitely suggest using it and let everyone vote to prioritize it. Even customer service can be Road mapped.

I currently have 6 Wyze cameras and plan to get more.

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I started here: Panasonic HomeHawk Indoor Wireless/AC on sale for $70 in Nov 18 at Costco.

After reading a lot of customer reviews and product comparisons I could see that no low-end option was going to be perfect. Full “wireless” required recharging batteries periodically - but battery-powered cameras didn’t do detection zones… like that.

Wyze was the hot upstart and the thought was “if there’s no perfect solution, if each will require compromise and troubleshooting/adaptation of some sort, three-cameras-for-the-price-of-one to experiment with is an easy choice.”

I think this is pretty rare in the consumer tech industry.

Vendors do not want to telegraph their shortcomings. It can make new customers hesitant to purchase, and it can give competitors vectors for attack marketing.

Thank you for taking the time to communicate these issues. I can’t promise a public facing bug list but I will talk to the team about it and about the updates to our service page. I’ll also give your examples of support issues to the team so that we can continue working on consistent training and improve the support experience. We apologize for the frustration that you have experienced.

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Thanks, Gwendolyn. :slight_smile: I’m thinking something like this:

Current Design Limitations

All products have design limitations (and roadmaps for planned enhancements.) We prefer to be transparent about them. Ergo:

The Wyze We-Respect-Your-Time FAQ

Can I do this with the Wyzecam and its App?

-Integrate and seamlessly access cloud and locally-stored content?
-Read vehicle license plates?
-Impress smart, attractive women?
-etc…

I brought this up with the team and a public bug list is under serious consideration. We need to find an effective solution that we’ll be able to keep constantly up to date. We can’t make promises quite yet but we are exploring possibilities. It should be noted that the solution probably wouldn’t have EVERY bug (as an example, that could be a security concern in some cases).

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Thanks, Gwendolyn. :slight_smile:

Posted this related info just now:

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You’re welcome! Thank you for the awesome table. This rocks! :smiley:

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A public-facing bug list is a bad idea from the perspective of running a business and expecting to sell more products, However, I can see the frustration expressed by peepeep because trying to understand or find all the issues reported in the community form is nearly impossible and very time consuming. Let’s face it, the organization of topics in the forum is not very good, especially since Wyze allows users to create topics (bad idea). So, here is a suggested solution for a "list of bugs": Wyze can survey the forum issues and summarize them under a list of concise categories. Call these “customer reported issues”, not “bugs”. Each issue can have a one or two sentence description and a brief status tag, such as pending, investigating, solved (with a link to where the solution is described). This way, if a user has a problem he or she can quickly check to see if others are having a similar problem. This list will also serve as an acknowledgement by Wyze that a problem may exist because at least X number of users have reported it. Finally, this list should only be a list of problems in the existing product, not suggestions for new features.

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I will send your suggestion to the person who would be in charge of the bug list for his consideration. :slight_smile:

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I kind of like this idea. A separate forum category in which only Wyze can create topics. Would be more visible and easier to maintain, I think, than a stand alone issues list. Current stuff would bubble to the top. Old stuff would age out to the bottom.

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I’ll add that perspective in to the message I sent earlier. :slight_smile:

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That reply was 12 days ago. Any update? Be nice if we could an update on something around here.otherwise just take the forum down. It causes more frustration than good it does. If Wyze commits to using us to help them use us seriously. Don’t give us lip service.

I checked in with the team and this is something that we still need to work on as far as infrastructure goes. It’s still a priority but our ducks aren’t in a row yet and there are some other deadlines coming up that the people involved with that infrastructure need to work on. We apologize for the delay.

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