Ghost Rule For The Color Bulb Unresolved

Power & Lighting
1

I’ve searched, but I just can’t find the solution to my problem which I’ve had for many, many months.

I have one Wyze Color Light, with have 2 rules (which are the only rules I’ve had) that continue to activate even though I’ve deleted both of them. They’re both morning wake up rules, set to turn on at different times / days, and are scheduled to turn off after 45 minutes. I’ve deleted the rules, deleted and added the bulb in the App several times, uninstalled and reinstalled the app, and they’re still running. I’ve also cleared the cache on the phone, have made sure any association to Alexa is disabled, renamed the bulb when it’s being added, but the rules persist.

Everything else about the bulb seems to work fine. I can turn it on and off from the App, change the colors, set themes, and when the power went out and came back on, the bulb turned on automatically as was defined in the settings. The only thing that seems a little inconsistent at time is the that the timer to turn the bulb off doesn’t work.

I’ve read numerous posts about “ghost” rules, but the best I can see is where a FW update was supposed to take care of the issue, and that batch processing back in July of 2021 supposedly cleared the issue. I also saw a post where users followed the instructions in a link (that seemingly didn’t help?), but I can’t find the thread with a link to that possible solution.

As you can imagine, it’s especially frustrating on my days off when the light turns on at 5:45 am. Grrrrr…

I have trouble ticket in with Wyze since July 5th (3148574) but haven’t heard anything back… :neutral_face:

Any ideas?

Thanks,
David

1 Like
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Sorry to hear you haven’t heard anything back since the 5th. Thanks for including the support Ticket number. I’ve escalated your situation to have someone look into it.

Just to be sure, did you check your junk/spam folder to make sure the response didn’t accidentally get filtered out?

Since you deleted the rule and deleted the device and it is still happening, I think you are right that it is a ghost rule, but someone on the rules team will probably have to check into that. Will you also please submit a “Log” for the bulb so they’ll have something to help look at (you can do that from the settings area of the bulb)?
Maybe also a “Rule” Log, which you can find here: Account Tab → Wyze Support → Submit a Log → Wyze App & Services → Rules.

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Thanks for the response carverofchoice.

I did submit a log from the phone app. The log ID from the 5th is 1101953, and I had an online chat with Lloyd late in the afternoon and confirmed with him that he would associate the log ID with ticket 3148574.

I haven’t received any emails and there’s none in SPAM, and the notification of your response came directly to my inbox without a problem.

Thanks for escalating,

David

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I have just spent more than 30 minutes in a chat session online at Wyze support, who can’t seem to understand what I’m asking for when I ask if there’s a status update to my ticket & associated log ID. This is getting very frustrating. It should relatively easy to say either yes or no, and if no, why not, or when they expect to have a response…

Part of their response is…

“However, we regret to inform you that, as per our data privacy and security policies, we are unable to share specific updates or details about the logs you’ve submitted. Rest assured, your data is handled with the utmost confidentiality, and our team is diligently working to analyze the logs and identify the root cause of the issue.”

Now they’re telling me the ticket has been closed.

This is ridiculous and beyond frustrating at this point.

Update: I had to leave the chat but when I came back the suggestion was to disable the current rule or set up a new one. I had already explained in the ticket that the rules had been deleted, so it seems that the ticket wasn’t really read by anyone?

:angry:

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I did escalate this for you as I said I would, and it sounds like nobody contacted you about what they found. I am reading that the status was basically that there wasn’t anything more the agent could do after troubleshooting failed to resolve the issue since the device is out of warranty. So that is the status update to your ticket as you are requesting and struggling to learn.

I tried to explain that in my opinion this issue doesn’t have anything to do with the device or it’s warranty status. My personal belief is that they need to have an engineer on the Rules Engine team go into your account and delete the “Ghost Rule” there on the Backend, that it is Wyze’s server that is the problem, not the device. Of course, since I don’t have access to verify that, it is mostly an educated hypothesis based on past experience of seeing similar rare issues and how they were resolved. We haven’t seen this is a long time because Wyze indicated that they resolved whatever was causing Ghost Rules in the past. So it is possible the cause and resolution is something totally different now for which I have no knowledge, so I can’t conclusively say anything as I don’t have the access. However, I do feel a little frustrated with the status conclusion that they can’t do more because the device is out of warranty, when it is my strong belief that I think it doesn’t have anything to do with the device. But again, I don’t know know that with absolute certainty. Still, I do feel frustrated that the rules engine team didn’t get involved to see if it is a ghost rule stuck on the back end due to a server issue of not actually deleting the rule on the back end when you told it to delete it.

I feel like I have personally exhausted the options at my disposal after I escalated this situation for you and explained what I believe the issue to be, and finding the status is that there is nothing more the support agents could’ve done beyond the troubleshooting script. :frowning: I think this is the first time I have ever been disappointed with an escalation outcome/status.

I no longer have any contact with any employees on the Rules Engine team either, so I can’t ask someone on that team to investigate. I did pass on more details to another employee, trying to clarify what I believe could be a potential resolution, but I am not sure that will play out any differently.

To answer about the logs though, Support doesn’t have any access to read the logs. Only the devs/engineers can read logs. And to be honest, the logs are very technical, so the support staff wouldn’t understand what they are seeing in the logs anyway. It doesn’t mean that NOBODY can see the logs, just that the support staff can’t tell you anything about them because they are restricted to the eyes of the devs/engineers only. What they do is pass the logs onto a dev/engineer team and THEY review the logs and then will tell support a summary of what they found.

In this case, the closed ticket means they’ve determined there is nothing more they can do about this issue. :frowning:

I love Wyze, I am going on 300+ devices with Wyze and 40 cameras, so I am a big fan, but I am very disappointed in how this situation was handled, and I have passed on feedback that in my strong opinion, when they get a report of a ghost rule like this, it needs to be passed on to someone with access to rules engine who can look into it and potentially delete any ghost rule causing this kind of chaos. It is my opinion that it should have nothing to do with the Device Warranty. I believe it is something to do with the Wyze Servers and The Backend…the “Rules Engine” and that it should be handled by someone with that access. But I do not work for Wyze, and I do not have the access to be sure my assumptions are even correct. But I will say this may go down as one of the few instances where I have actually been disappointed in Wyze…such instances are very rare and a short list, but I feel something should be updated to better resolve ghost rule issues like this.

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carverofchoice,

Thanks again for your assistance. I had previously assumed (based on your comments about escalating) that you were an employee, and didn’t realize until now that you’re not, which makes your level of help even more appreciated.

Prior to submitting my problem here, I spent several weeks (on and off) chasing down any thread I could find on this subject, and there’s nothing I saw that indicated bad hardware, and everything, including the July 2021 post from WYZE indicated Server or possibly a firmware issue. I had also spent several days of methodically troubleshooting on my own, making one change at a time and waiting until the next morning to see if the change I made had an impact.

Regarding the logs, what you say makes perfect sense. Based on my past engineering experience I know logs can be very complex to read. But what was disappointing / frustrating, is that when I contacted support, I was very clear in saying that I was following up on the ticket, not the log, although I did make sure I identified the log ID that I sent. In fact, it was support who asked me to send the log file from my app and then call back to make sure the log ID was associated with the trouble ticket.

I did receive an email from WYZE late yesterday afternoon from a WYZE Wizard with an apology for the less-than-ideal experience I’ve had, and an assurance from the sender that she was taking over in assisting me, which I was grateful for, The email also indicated that there’s an App patch to be released to fix this issue which kind of puzzled me since I thought this had been resolved back in 2021? Maybe it’s a patch that addresses the other devices and rules issues I read about. Who knows…

Unlike you, I have a very small eco-system and most of the devices work very well, although in the early days, whenever I saw notification in the App that there was an update to be applied, I got real nervous 'cause I just knew something was bound to break (which it generally did) but things have gotten a lot better in the past years.

Hopefully I’ll hear back from Support soon.

Again, many thanks.

David…

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@DavidJ726 sorry to hear what you are experiencing with Ghost Rules. I am a community Volunteer with @carverofchoice , I provided your link for review and have received notification your Ghost Rule issue should be corrected now.

If you wouldn’t mind, can you verify and let us know?

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Thanks @spamoni !! I am very pleased to hear that someone from Wyze believes they found the problem and got it corrected for @DavidJ726 as I was hoping someone would.

Yes, David, please confirm with us if it seems to have gotten resolved now. I’m glad you reached on the forums so we could have this looked into a little more thoroughly. It is what we are here volunteering our time for. I would love to hear a follow up now that someone at Wyze seems to have found and corrected it. I love when someone at Wyze takes the time to go out of their way to resolve things like this and work to try to prevent them in the future. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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@spamoni

Good morning,

Yes! I can confirm that at least one of the two rules are now inactive! :grinning: I won’t know for sure if the 2nd one deleted until Monday (it’s a Monday & Tuesday only rule) but I’m very hopeful that it has been corrected as well.

Much appreciation to both you and @carverofchoice for your help! It just feels good to not have this problem lurking in the background anymore.

It’s unfortunate that something that should of been relatively simple to resolve turned into such an ordeal, but I’m glad to see the power of the community forums at work here.

I’ll try to remember to post results next Monday or Tuesday.

Thanks again,
David

3 Likes
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Really appreciate it. Wyze is looking into the root cause for this. I am sure that they will find it given enough logs and information.

Appreciate your support on this.

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That’s wonderful! I am happy to hear this update from you. Let us know next week if the other ghost rule was resolved or not. Your sharing this and your feedback are very helpful in improving things for everyone. This is a good example of why the forums here are so valuable.

:+1:

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Good afternoon,

I can confirm that the 2nd rule is no longer active.

I am a bit curious as to what the problem actually was, and also, is there the potential for an adverse impact if I was create the same rules with the same name?

Thanks,
David

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That’s great to hear, David.

My understanding is that there should be no risk creating the same rules with the same name. However, when I experienced ghost rules a long time ago, since we haven’t been told the exact cause, I chose to use a slightly different rule name when I recreated them. I think I made an abbreviation on one but fully spelled out the other, or added a word or something like that if I remember correctly. I played it on the extra careful paranoid side of things. :joy: though I think my main reason for doing that, was less out of fear it would cause it to happen again, and more for in case it happened again, then I could distinguish the new one with the new name when I am telling them what rule to look for. Because back when it happened to me they asked me what the rule name was so I wanted to make sure that the new rule had a different name so I could tell them they’re looking for a specific rule name without getting confused about whether we were talking about the first one or the new one. I don’t think that will be an issue for you so it probably doesn’t really matter, but If you want my advice it would be to make the name slightly different.

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I have the very same issue. I just deleted my bedroom lamp off the app and reinstalled it thinking that would help. Is there a fix coming for the ghost rules soon or should I send this issue to Wyze for review? I am in the same boat since I had my wake up set for 5am and no longer need to get up that early, I’m really annoyed with it.

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Will submit a log for it?
Account tab → Wyze support → Submit a Log → Account and Services → Rules
And post the log number here.
If you remember what the name of the rule is, will you post that and tell me what the trigger/action for it was?

We’ll see if we can pass that on to someone to look into. I know they’re interested in understanding and resolving it.