How to Keep Your Cloud Video Recordings Free with Cam Plus Lite

[peepeep]

• I would guess no more than 10% who choose Cam Plus Lite will opt to pay $0. My first thought was 20% but I think that’s too high.

• I would guess Wyze would prefer no more than 5% ‘freeloaders.’

• I was surprised how many objected to the ‘guilting’ one is required to endure to opt $0.

• I wish I had screenshots of the exact sequence and phrasing.

• I’m guessing they’re ‘guilting’ because it’s effective, ie, it worked in the Legacy PD Pilot.

 
Here’s a sequence from the big Cam Plus Lite announcement thread I think is worth highlighting.

Click to expand

@Homeautomator

I think it’s a bit disingenuous to frame this as you “giving person detection” when you are in fact taking away 12 second cloud storage, a major selling point to your cameras and forcing users to opt in and get a hard sale to pay for to get it back. This is an extra bitter pill to swallow because the first cameras I bought from you guys also came with person detection and again, you took that away and wanted me to again, opt back in and get a sales pitch to contribute. What is this, a charity?

I get it, cloud storage costs you guys money, but that was your business model! I didn’t pick it, you guys did If I wanted to pay a subscription, I would have gone with Ring or Nest. I’m sorry, their products may cost more (although they have come down a lot in the last year), but they are established and work. I chose you because I don’t want to pay for a subscription and I like local storage and am ok with tinkering. Now I’m not sure if it’s safe to buy anymore cameras if they won’t come with cloud storage without paying.

If I may make a couple of suggestions, your SD card reader has just been terrible. I’m glad it’s getting an update but I don’t think it’s enough. It’s impossible to find anything on there without using the cloud storage as a rough guide. Also, people you share a camera with don’t have access to it and we can’t share an account so this will essentially leave all the shared users in the dark. All they get is a live view now. That is a deal-breaker for families where the primary holder shares the account with the rest of the family. At least with 12 seconds, it was something.

I really hope that instead of keep bringing new features, you work on existing ones. If you fix the SD card problems, then not having cloud recording will be a viable solution.

@pete454ss

You can opt to pay $0.00

@Homeautomator

Yes, but for how long? I bought into this system so I could keep building on it when I had the time and the funds. Now who knows when they’ll stop this “opt in” or when they’ll revoke it. Also, the whole opting in and naming your own price thing is undignified and humiliating because they will tell you what THEY think you should pay first and if you pick $0, they’ll try to guilt you into paying. To quote Ritchie from the Sopranos, “What’s already mine is not yours to give me”.

@peepeep

@Homeautomator

he whole opting in and naming your own price thing is undignified and humiliating because they will tell you what THEY think you should pay first and if you pick $0, they’ll try to guilt you into paying.

I paid $0 in their Legacy Person Detection trial (their “name-your-price experiment”) and they didn’t guilt me.

At all.

@Homeautomator

Have you seen the new one? After you pick zero, they ask if you’re sure and go on a thing about how cloud storage is expensive and if you’re sure you want to do it.

@rtabox

I’m with you. Yes cloud storage is expensive. But it was their model. The worst thing a company can do is break a contract with their customers. They should continue to support their legacy promises. If necessary, the expense should be paid out of operating funds. They have now shown that their promises aren’t worth much. Believe me, current and future customers will notice…

@peepeep

No, I haven’t seen the new one. I know I’m not susceptible to that stuff and if they had said it after telling me $0 was a valid option I would just brush it off and continue.

I take them at their word that the offer of $0 is genuine.

@Customer

@intellisig

need to see the events in the “Events” section. I don’t want to have to go the playback section for each camera. I have 10 cameras. I need to see all cameras together chronologically.

I’d like that too but how would it work? Either the app would have to poll ALL your cameras’ SD cards every time you use it and built a local table, or else Wyze would need to build and maintain an index of each SD card’s contents on their servers in a table similar to the current cloud Event format. Neither is a trivial undertaking, and the first option sounds way too slow and unwieldy.

@Homeautomator

They really would have to overhaul the SD playback in order to get this to work.In it’s current incarnation, Even locally there is no way to see previews of the recorded events. They have them for the cloud version but not the SD card version. I Don’t think that they have to scan the SD card, just do what they’re doing now and instead of the video, just have an image which is stored on the cloud, and then use that time stamp to search locally

@intellisig

I need to see the events in the “Events” section. I don’t want to have to go the playback section for each camera. I have 10 cameras. I need to see all cameras together chronologically.

Here’s the deal: I think Wyze is lying. They say they want to do what’s best for users and they love their customers, but they regularly make decisions to push us toward a subscription service. I do not want a subscription service. I bought Wyze because of the “no fee” claim.

Every few days I see an advertisement in the app to get me to buy the subscription. How is displaying this advertisement so often in my best interests? It’s not.

I’m done with Wyze. I don’t trust the Chinese back-end software they use. They seem to do a “rug pull” every couple of years by taking away functionality while claiming it’s an improvement.

Why don’t you just add RTSP to the stock firmware and then I’ll Agent DVR or Blue IRIS to manage my cameras the way I want?

John

@Homeautomator

This is kind of their own doing because they haven’t done anything to improve SD playback since the beginning. It’s ridiculous to have them in two completed different parts of the app.

@joe1

This is the way open-source software works and quite frankly not supporting Wyze is a sure way to end up having to buy Ring products, or similar. The prices for both the devices and the required subscriptions are ridiculously high.

I don’t know you or your financial situation and hope you are doing well. I have chosen to support Wyze and try to help them stay in business. They are effectively giving you free software, or whatever you choose to pay and do not understand why you would complain. I see nothing sneaky here, instead I see a company being transparent before they go bankrupt. I have boxes full of devices and gadgets from great companies that no longer function just because the companies could not compete against the big guys. I am happy to help protect the future functionality of my devices, as well as help Wyze stay in business.

Either way, have a great day.

Best Regards,
Joe

@Homeautomator

The flaw in your argument is that they are NOT open source. They are a for- profit company and God bless them for that;however, they cannot act like a patreon /open source company with their hats in their hands one day and act like a startup seeking to disrupt the industry the next with a questionable business model.

They sold a product with no uncertain terms that said you got 12 second clips of cloud storage and even person detection in the xnor days. Then they took those away and want to frame it as them giving it to us and then making us feel like beggers by having to go through the process of saying we don’t want to pay them again.

If they want to go the open source route then go that route and accept the rules of that path. If they want to be a closed for profit business then honor the terms you set to start with. It is in fact deceptive to do so otherwise.

@Customer

@Homeautomator

however, they cannot act like a patreon /open source company with their hats in their hands one day and act like a startup seeking to disrupt the industry the next with a questionable business model.

Sure they can. Why not? Tons of Patreon supported people ALSO have tons of paid commercials on their podcasts or streams. Tons of open source based companies charge tons of money for support and for services. Heard of IBM / Redhat? Open source companies may also CHARGE for software. I mean, you may not approve (and I agree it’s incongruous and the upselling is sketchy) but it’s hardly a *binary" thing. Hell even PBS has blatant ads now in addition to fundraising and pledge drives.

@Homeautomator

My biggest issue with this whole thing, going back to taking away the XNOR person detection is that I am straight shooter. Tell me upfront about what you want to charge and what I’ll get from that and I’ll make my decision accordingly, but don’t change the terms after the fact.

It doesn’t mean that I’m a cheapskate or want something for nothing the way the pay what you want screens imply. I had already installed pricey DVR and then NVR systems which cost around $2K and were giant pains with the port forwarding and such. I had also installed Ring and Nest cameras before finding out about WYZE and knew the going rate.

If WYZE would have come out and said “Our V2 camera is $40 and we’ll give you 6 months of 12 second clips after which you can stick with just SD card or subscribe to us at about what the other guys charge” that would have been an honest offer because they would make an actual profit from it, and it would let me compare it with the other 2 and decide whether it was worth it to pay a little more to go with the big boys or a little less and help a startup company go up against the big boys.

Instead, WYZE came out with this illogical idea to offer dirt cheap cameras with lifetime 12 second storage. It wouldn’t take an MBA to figure out that at some point, the scales in the cost graph would tip, but hey, that was the sales pitch! Who was I to argue with people smarter than myself who had figured out how to monetize the footage. I mean google was never charging customers for google’s search the android system either so perhaps these guys knew something nobody else knew. At any rate, I took them up on their offer.

Now they act all shocked that storage costs money and contracts with XNOR fell apart and are trying to guilt people who took them at their word into paying for a subscription after they’ve already invested in the system and helped them get off the ground. Yes, I know, I know, if one opts in, they won’t lose anything and even get person detection back, but that’s not the point. The point is, shouldn’t have to do that. Your word is your bond.

@MtnMan

Yes, I know, I know, if one opts in, they won’t lose anything and even get person detection back, but that’s not the point.

To me that is the point. They don’t get person detection back, they get person detection added. I guess I don’t shamed so easily.

@Homeautomator

@MtnMan

To me that is the point. They don’t get person detection back, they get person detection added. I guess I don’t shamed so easily.

Well when I first bought my cameras, person detection was built into the hardware, but somehow or another there was a contract dispute and we suffered. I decided not to opt in then because again, it was a “pay what you want” type of thing and it would make me feel like they were giving me something I didn’t deserve to have.

@MtnMan

it was a “pay what you want” type of thing and it would make me feel like they were giving me something I didn’t deserve to have

Well it appears you a good sensitive soul with moral conflicts burdening you. Me, I have no problem enjoying the gifts the universe offer me.