I’m sorry Wyze, but this is goodbye.
I know that this letter comes to you on the eve of the Holiday of Love here in the US, but there is no better time to express to you my loss of love over you. It’s time, it’s time for me to let go. I initially was curious to see a ~$25 camera’s performance as I was trying to build out my own home security/monitoring. There were initial concerns as your cameras didn’t support the IP-Camera technologies (such as the ONVIF Dafang-Hack). This makes it hard for me, a security-conscious individual to accept that my camera info may be exposed in a hack or breach (cough cough, like someone had…). I mean, hey isn’t it bad enough you retain my CC info from my purchase instead of making it transactional (seriously though, why keep it if there’s no subscription?)?
As if getting past that wasn’t bad enough, there was the concern that you were sharing my data with China. I mean, I get it, there are contracts in place. But those are to protect you, not your customers. Ok, so you took a stand here and separated ties. This means your customers lost out on a valuable service, person detection. Again, as a security-conscious individual, not much of a loss. And even so, in the long run, you were able to return the service. Cool. But now you want to charge me for it? Yeah, ok, I guess. I mean, yeah, you’ve got to make money too. I get it. But let’s return to this as I’ve been covering this chronologically from my experience.
Let’s then talk about the rapid growth plan. Because this is, to me, the largest failure on your behalf. I mean, I feel for Gwendolyn. I’ve witnessed her almost single handily manage this unruly (at times) community. But I gest. This Community was my savior for a while as Wyze seemingly burst at the seams with new products. Alright, um, a scale. Sure, that’s what I want? Well, maybe not. But I’m sure that there are plenty of folks that do! But you know what, let’s gloss over the individual products, let’s talk about the fact that there were, what, ~12-14 new products since I jumped on board to this little camera company. Only 3 of those roughly 14 products happened to be cameras. Hmm, ok. I mean Samsung and LG make TVs that do laundry and help to keep your food fresh. Again, I kid.
What really pushed me to get off the proverbial couch were the issues I started to experience. I mean, I understood the fact that you now want to charge for person detection. And look at that, it aligns with the fact that you now are offering 24/7 security. Great. I hope those sensors work better than your v1 add-on kit. Because I know for a fact that I’m not the only one with issues there.
So I guess this leaves me to my last point. Wyze Support. I know a pandemic certainly hasn’t helped. Hiring freezes, loss of sales, product research and engineering, cash in, cash out. I’m no economics major, but I’ve had a class or two here and there. What I do know however is customer service. Yeah, it starts at the beginning of the relationship, but it’s also what helps to carry the relationship to the next level, or product. What I’ve witnessed, however, is something that is a little less than desired. I’m not just talking about your Support team, but we’ll get to them later. Your product features and quality lack the quality control that really resonates with me. I understand that you are trying to bring quality products to the masses at reasonable prices, but myself and many others on this forum have openly admitted that we’d be more than happy to pay a few extra bucks. for a little better quality that has been proven to be of a minimal increase in; production, design, development, and manufacturing.
But, when all is said and done, my heart is not quite done being broken. I, like many others here, are at a loss when it comes to your customer service. I’ll be short here. It’s been over a week and I haven’t received a single reply from your Support team. Not even a “we got your message” has graced my inbox. You’ve left me on read. I’ve been ghosted.
Fear not, for like Gloria Gaynor, I will survive and so will you. Unfortunately, though, this is the end of our journey together.