Multiple Failures in Responses to Alarm Event

Services & Integrations
1

This morning our system was in Home mode when my wife opened a monitored door. An alarm sounded and so, within about one minute, she disarmed the system. Our system is running in Test mode, so I would have thought that would be the end of the event. Not so.

Shortly thereafter, I received a text (SMS) message, which I did not notice. I believe that my wife, who is listed as a secondary responder, also received a text message. However, I cannot now find such a message even though she would not have deleted it. So perhaps no such message was received.

Here’s the really odd thing. Some TWO HOURS later, my daughter, who is listed as a tertiary responder, received a text message stating that an alarm was active and that law enforcement response had been requested—this notwithstanding that the system is operating in Test mode. It is now 90 minutes since this series of events began and law enforcement has NOT contacted us. Neither did we at any time receive a voice call concerning the alarm.

The many uniformly positive comments I read about the quality of Wyze (i.e., Noonlight) response to alarm events was a decisive factor leading to my decision to install a Wyze security system. But this incident demonstrates at least four serious failures:

  • Test mode was not observed.
  • Response time may be measured in hours, not minutes.
  • The published protocol (text message, voice call, and then law enforcement summons) was not followed.
  • Law enforcement notification was NOT reliable.

If I had been aware of, or merely suspected, such deficiencies I would NOT have invested in or installed a Wyze system.

Questions:

  • What is going on?
  • Have I read erroneous or unrepresentative positive reports of service quality?
  • Should I expect such failures in the future?

Many thanks for the community’s shared experience and advice .

2

In this case, I would submit a log and contact support. I’ve never heard of this ever happening.

I usually run mine in test mode and this doesn’t happen.

Let us know what support tells you.

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3

Carverofchoice, thanks for your suggestion, which I have taken. One related observation: The “details” textbox of the Log Submission screen accommodates only about 7 lines of text. So a detailed explanation is not remotely possible. “Brief description” would be more like it.

BTW, the assertions that I offered are confirmed by text message correspondence, observable program settings, or similar evidence. The only exception is the absence of law enforcement response, since a lack of response cannot be positively confirmed. My point is that I am NOT relying on memory or opinion for these details; my assertions are matters of fact. During the drafting of my posting I deleted every statement that did not satisfy this simple criterion. That said, I am capable of mistakes. If you notice any, please let me know. My apologies for any such errors or omissions.

Thanks again,

4

Since I am expressing dissatisfaction, please let me add an unrelated issue. I have recently found it necessary to request support for account-, login-, and program operations-related issues. My experience has been consistently poor.

To my recollection, none of these requests have been resolved by support even though some are confirmed by other customer reports over a period of months or years (such as login problems reported as due to an adblocker that appear to relate to a captcha problem since no adblocker is in use). Worse, it regularly appears that respondents have not read, or perhaps not understood, my description of the problem.

As an example, one such support case remains outstanding. I want to cancel a monthly per-camera Cam Plus subscription that has been superseded by an monthly Unlimited Cam Plus subscription. The Unlimited subscription appears in the app but support claims they do not find it “in the system.” When support made this claim I provided a screenshot from the app, showing the subscription. Support ignored my evidence without comment. Support requested that I substantiate the existence of the Unlimited subscription by specifying whether I subscribed it via the app or via the web site, which I no longer recalled. Ignoring the screenshot but intending to depend on inherently unreliable recollection made me crazy.

(At the time of my original request the situation was complicated by my inability to move cameras from the per-camera subscription to the Unlimited subscription. I subsequently resolved this problem after receiving no assistance from support. The root of the problem was that I had found the user interface unclear. FWIW, I have taught, at undergraduate and graduate levels, and written on the topic of user interface design and can offer an objective, grounded critique of the user interface in question.)

After repeated correspondence, I have given up on this support request and one other support request. I will revisit this one after the next billing, when I can appeal to the payment transaction as further evidence of the existence of the Unlimited Cam Plus subscription. Or, perhaps I will owe nothing on the obsoleted per-camera Cam Plus subscription since no cameras are now assigned to it.

The bottom line is that I will think twice before expending the effort necessary to generate a support request. I have repeatedly found it not to be worth that effort.

5

This is partially because usually a log comes together with a support ticket which can have more details and notes attached to it. So in some ways the Log description is more like a very short summary to confirm that it is the correct log about the issue at hand. Similar to an email’s Subject line. The email subject line is just for easy reference about what the rest of the email will be in relation to. Similarly, the log will be a short overview while the support staff will attach the log with the notes they send the support team about what is going on. The main benefit of the log isn’t what you type, it is the system logs that go with it that the devs really care about. So in this case, in your log I would’ve just said something like: “HMS was in test mode but alarm still sent SMS’s at weird intervals but didn’t alert law enforcement” Then they can look for that in the logs and use the extra details support sent them for more context.

Don’t worry about it, your description was adequate. While I am not speaking for Wyze about what happened, I do recall when they first started PUBLIC beta testing of their Noonlight partnership (even before the HMS stuff launched), they had a “Testing Mode” that would still send texts as if it were totally active, but wouldn’t actually alert law enforcement because it was actually in testing mode. I am wondering if this is something similar that happened to you. I wonder if your system was somehow in a testing mode that would still do texts, etc, but had everything else disabled. Honestly, I would love that…at least as long as it didn’t falsely say a law enforcement response had been requested. Again, I am purely speculating based on a public test they did with Noonlight a long time ago before we even knew they were working on a security system.

It is also possible that Noonlight DID actually contact Law Enforcement and that your local Law Enforcement ignored it because you didn’t have the proper Security system permit. Some law enforcement agencies require that you register your security system with them and have a permit number for it or they won’t ever respond to your alarms and requests from the alarm company. So it is quite possible that your local municipality is one of those. Some of them even require you to pay yearly fees for the privilege of having the permit, in addition to paying for any false alarms. If you have not registered with them and received a permit number (which is also entered into the Monitoring settings under “Home Information”), then it’s possible Noonlight requested a law enforcement dispatch and they just ignored the request because you never went through the proper bureaucratic red tape. I would not be surprised at all if there the case.

Related to your Cam Plus Unlimited subscription, the reason it is relevant where you ordered the subscription from is because if you ordered it through the App, then Wyze isn’t actually in control of that subscription, either Google or Apple own the subscription and Wyze can’t really do anything about it, you have to go through Apple/Google. They won’t even allow Wyze to cancel it or refund it or anything. Apple and Google want their money and hold subscriptions hostage and don’t even give app owners access to a lot of things like that. It’s a lot worse of a situation than people realize. Thus it seems since Wyze support can’t view it at all, means it is likely you went through the app and that Apple or Google screwed it up and you would have to go through Apple or Google Support to fix it or refund it or whatever. If you can get it canceled through them, I would suggest that from now on you consider ALWAYS going through a browser to purchase any subscriptions from any company in the future (not just Wyze). Apple and Google steal 30% royalties, causing prices on everything to jack up through the roof, so ordering directly from the company through their own website allows companies to keep costs down and have more control in helping you out and making sure everything works the way you want. When you order through an App, Apple and Google often screw things up and you have to go through them to fix things because they don’t allow the app company to touch their golden egg. Just FYI for future consideration. :wink:

Again, let me know what you find out from future support responses. I’m interested to hear if they share anything with you about what happened or how they’re resolving it, etc. Thanks for the good explanations. :+1:

6

Carverofchoice, thanks for the many helpful items of information.

Re local law enforcement. They are extremely helpful and cooperative toward homeowners with alarms. For example, my previous alarm system generated a false alarm, due to pet motion. I arrived home surprised to find a squad car parked in front of my home. I anticipated an angry lecture but the officer was downright cordial. To my surprise, I learned there were no local requirements of any kind. This was a great contrast to the situation in my previous city of residence, which almost seemed to be discouraging alarm systems.

Re test mode. I’ve been running in Test mode for the month or two during which I’ve been setting up the system. I haven’t observed any other system action inconsistent with the current mode.

Re purchase of subscription. My memory is simply insufficiently reliable to serve as the source of detailed information about month-old transactions. I suspect this is much more often the case than customers might realize or admit.

Your advice about using the web in order to deal directly with Wyze seems sound. But I had been unable, for protracted periods, to access the Wyze web site. Support was no more helpful for me than for other customers who had reported what seems to me to be the same problem.

The system complained about problems with an adblocker when browser status confirmed no adblocker was in use. My opinion is that the problem is due to captcha technology, which is complex and incompletely standardized. Whatever the cause, I could not log in for days at a time. I’ve never experienced such a problem. It was extremely frustrating.

I don’t anticipate hearing further from support on my outstanding problems other than today’s alarm anomaly. After multiple unproductive rounds of communication I have given up on the possibility of getting any resolution of my problems and ceased further communication. There’s simply no point in eliciting unproductive responses after having tried to communicate the problem several ways. Having written more than one dozen technical books, I’m reasonably confident that, at least after several iterations, my writing can be understood by anyone willing to expend the effort to understand it. My tentative conclusion is that Wyze support is too overworked to invest the time necessary to understand the problem reports I submitted.

Cheers,

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7

Ah, that does make a difference, thank you for the context. Hopefully support or tier 2 can figure out what happened in your case here.

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8

Another issue: apparent ignorance of survey design 101.

Wyze apparently tries to streamline communication by presenting multiple-choice questions in, for example, the creation of a support ticket. It seems not to have occurred to the designer of these questions that a customer may have an issue other than any of those presented. Or, a customer may have multiple issues but be able to express only a single issue.

Fundamentally there is always the need for an open-ended response to survey questions and there is always need for opportunity to expand upon canned responses. As it stands, being straight-jacketed into one of these canned dialogues can be an exercise in frustration. Doubtless, considerable miscommunication results from such poor and inadequate survey design.

From a customer experience standpoint these failures occur precisely where Wyze should be at greatest pains to avoid missed or poor communication.

9

Yeah, I usually open the support chat and just type “human” and then it asks me in which way I want to contact them:

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I personally usually pick “email” and then fill out the form and I’m good to go:

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That’s my shortcut to getting to support when I know I need more than basic troubleshooting steps.

10

I have pasted below the response from Wyze Support. Like the other responses I’ve recently received I hope I can be forgiven for deeming it a full-on non sequitur.

Why they suppose my request has anything to do with the Security Camera feature, which I am not currently using, is a complete mystery to me. I can’t begin to see how to respond to such a useless, irrelevant message. About the only thing Support’s message has to do with my trouble report is that both include the word “alert.” CORRECTION: After reviewing my report, I find that it does NOT include the word “alert.”

*** MY PROBLEM REPORT FOLLOWS ***

Brief description: HMS was in Test mode but alarm sent SMS messages at odd intervals. Did not alert law enforcement despite SMS message to the contrary sent 2 hours after alarm.

For a detailed description of the problem please see the forum posting titled Multiple Failures in Responses to Alarm Event.

See also submitted log [#911154]

*** END OF PROBLEM REPORT ***

*** SUPPORT RESPONSE FOLLOWS ***

As of 1/12/2023, we deployed a fix to the Security Camera Feature in your Wyze Home Monitoring service. This added the capability to trigger Threat Alerts for the following cameras:

  • Wyze Cam v2
  • Wyze Cam v3
  • Wyze Cam v3 Pro
  • Wyze Cam Pan v1
  • Wyze Cam Pan v2

This means that whenever the chosen detection settings are triggered, you will receive a Threat Alert push notification or critical alert( IOS devices only). Threat Alerts are available for the following types of detection:

  • Motion
  • Person

To adjust these notifications:

  1. In the Wyze app, select the Monitoring tab.

  2. Select Home Monitoring Settings > Security Cameras.

  3. Tap Threat Alerts.

  4. Select if you would like Push Notifications or set it to Off.

  5. Note: For iOS users, these alerts are called Critical Alerts.

Please note that these alerts will not trigger an emergency response.

*** END OF SUPPORT RESPONSE ***

11

Carverofchoice, concerning your shortcut to reach Support: That’s pretty much exactly what I eventually did, except that I used some response other than “human” to get to the response asking how I want to contact Support. Like you, I chose email. :smiley:

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12

Interesting.

Is it possible to post a screenshot of the SMS messages? If so, please make an effort to block out or crop out all personal information (names, phone number, or anything else).

Did you reply to them that this had nothing to do with the cameras? The cameras will only send a push notification, not an SMS, so they should’ve recognized this is unrelated to the recent camera changes (this is why I didn’t mention that).

13

Carverofchoice, as I wrote (I apologize for my many words), at the time of this writing I have not replied to Support. That’s because I doubt the possibility of effective communication. As in the other communication I’ve had with Support, you’d find it difficult to convince me that the writer had actually read, or read and understood, my message. In other contexts I’ve sent as many as three messages without receiving a reply that was on point. Moreover, as an exchange of messages continues the responses from Support seem to become less, not more, coherent.

I’m willing, at some point, to reply in this case because this is a public experiment of sorts. But otherwise I would not find within me the necessary patience and hope.

From the Wyze app, here’s a timeline of events:

05:09:48 AM Alarm triggered
05:10:07 AM Alarm cancelled
05:10:08 AM Disarmed

Both my wife and I received IOS notifications from the Wyze app. However, the iPhone deletes notifications after they’re read. AFAIK, they cannot be searched or recovered after this automatic deletion.

Neither my wife nor I can find an SMS message from Wyze HMS. I would not have deleted one if I had received it. So I infer that we did not receive them even though I would have expected otherwise. I find it odd that my daughter received an SMS message while we did not.

It’s easier to type the SMS my daughter received than to anonymize a screenshot. The text follows:

*** TYPED SMS MESSAGE TEXT FOLLOWS ***

7:20 AM [See note, below]

WYZE HOME MONITORING SERVICE 5:09 AM
To: [daughter’s name]

WYZE HOME MONITORING SYSTEM
EMERGENCY CONTACT ALERT

Dear [daughter’s first name],

[my name] added you as an emergency contact on their Wyze Home Monitoring service.

There is an active alarm at [my first name]’s place—[property location]. Our monitoring center has notified [my first name] of the alarm and has requested law enforcement be dispatched to the address. [my first name]’s phone number is [my phone number].

Please be aware of the situation,

Wyze Home Monitoring Service

*** END OF SMS MESSAGE ***

Note: I now believe that the time at the beginning of the SMS message is the current time at the moment when the SMS message was displayed. I had originally thought it was the time that the SMS message was received, because it seemed improbable that my daughter would have waited two hours to initiate correspondence concerning the alarm. This led me to wrongly understand a two-hour delay in receipt of the message.

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14

Support has substituted a new agent.

She informed me that, if I want the HMS to work properly, I must NOT operate in Test mode. She explains that’s why law enforcement was not summoned. She ignored the fact that the system told me it HAD summoned law enforcement.

She asked me to use the app function that resets HMS. If, after being reset, the system is still not working she directs me to submit a log, apparently not noticing that I’ve already done so.

She explains that Support cannot access logs submitted via the Wyze app, which go directly to Engineering. But her instructions on submitting a log direct me to use the app to do so. I’m somewhat confused by this. My best guess is that Support is not informed when a log is submitted. But, given the log ID, Support is able to retrieve the log.

As usual, Support’s message is more off point than on point. I’ll compose a reply later tonight and post her message and my reply here.

*** I DIDN’T AT FIRST UNDERSTAND IT AND SO I NEGLECTED TO MENTION THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF SUPPORT’S MOST RECENT MESSAGE: ***

“After [I submit a requested log file], this request will be closed as we are unable to offer any further troubleshooting.”

Say WHAT? Apparently Wyze Support has decided that I am a royal pain and so they passed me off to a supervisor who made a show of responding in some fashion and then composed and appended a Dear John paragraph. After I provide a log ID they propose to close the ticket without having answered even one of my questions! As near as I can tell, they haven’t yet understood what I’m asking!

Why would I bother giving Wyze a log file? For philanthropic reasons?

Why, in the future, would I bother contacting Support?

I will state for the record that, as of this moment, I regret basing my home security on Wyze hardware and services. I’m unsure what I will do to go forward. I have a lot invested in Wyze hardware. But I do not consider the system as a whole to be acceptably reliable. And I see absolutely no chance of being able to work with Wyze to improve the situation. It looks like I must abandon my investment and seek a better alternative. But doing so would be extremely painful on a retiree’s budget.

15

Please do so. Also, after you get your next response, please also post the support ticket number for me here as I may want to pass the details of this up for some coaching to be done especially since it seems multiple people may have misunderstood the context.

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*** MOST RECENT MESSAGE FROM SUPPORT ***

Hope you’re doing well when our message reaches you. I am [Support rep name omitted] from the Services Team, and I’ll be taking over to acknowledge your recent response. I am sorry to hear that you are having issues with your Home Monitoring and that it did not alert law enforcement. . We are very thankful for the time you took to talk to us regarding this matter.

Kindly make sure that you are outside test mode in order for the service to work. If it is already outside test mode, please go ahead and reset service. To do that, go to Account>Services>Home Monitoring and Reset Service.

If it’s still not working, please send us the firmware version of the hub and a device log. You can submit a log through individual devices by tapping on the Product > Device Settings > Wyze Support > Submit a Log.

Please note that app logs are sent directly to our engineering team to use towards improving future app and firmware releases. These logs cannot be accessed or followed by our support team. We’re working on developing a process so that we can track these logs but it’s still very much in progress.

Please inform me that your log has been submitted by replying to this email with the log ID once it is sent. After that, this request will be closed as we are unable to offer any further troubleshooting. Keep an eye out for future app and firmware updates. If the issue persists after those updates, please continue to submit logs so that our engineers can continue improving our devices.

Let us know if you need anything else.

Thank you for being a part of Wyze!

*** MY MOST RECENT RESPONSE TO SUPPORT. NOTE THAT THIS RESPONSE WAS SENT BEFORE I UNDERSTOOD THAT SUPPORT INTENDS IGNORING ANYTHING MORE I HAVE TO SAY (SEE ABOVE POSTING) ***

[Support rep name omitted], thanks for your response to my message. Please let me clarify the heart of my concern. I want to know what actions that the HMS took were actions it should have taken and what actions, if any, were erroneous and should not have been taken.

Please let me offer an example of what is apparently an erroneous response. You wrote that, in Test mode, the system does not request law enforcement action. Yet, did you read what I wrote in this regard? The system sent my emergency contact an SMS message stating: “Our monitoring center has notified [customer name omitted] of the alarm and has requested law enforcement be dispatched to the address.” This message was sent about 20 minutes after the Alarm event, which was cancelled by keypad about 1 minute after it occurred. In addition, no telephone call was made by HMS prior to the message being sent. And, I can find no evidence that law enforcement was requested, notwithstanding the message stating that law enforcement WAS requested. At risk of being overly repetitious, key questions in my mind include (1) what actually happened and (2) what should have happened.

If you have not already done so, I urge you to read the forum posting referenced in my first email message. The online form afforded me only 7 lines of text in which to explain the problem. The forum posting is not constrained by length and so I was able therein to offer a clearer and more complete statement of the problem.

I have questions regarding your direction to reset HMS. However, I’d like to postpone resetting HMS until we’re able to make some progress toward understanding what has already happened.

You also ask for a log. Please note that when I created this ticket I specified log ID 911154 as having been submitted not long after the events in question occurred.

I hope that my responses are helpful to you. If I’ve cut too many corners here and there I’m happy to redo the necessary actions if you will simply advise me of that necessity.

Thanks for your help!

Cheers,

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17

Well, I made a mess of things. I didn’t notice and understand one important sentence in Support’s response until after I had replied to Support and posted to this forum.

That sentence is the one in which Support explains they can’t be of any further help in troubleshooting snd so they are closing the ticket.

I can’t think of a fully appropriate response that doesn’t involve profanity. And I am NOT a fan or user of blue language!

Thanks for your help. I suspect that I am done not just with this incident but with Wyze. I no longer trust or respect Wyze or Wyze’s work products. It’s likely that I will dedicate myself to making that perspective as widely known as possible whereas just one week ago I’d have considered myself a Wyze fan.

18

Oops! I forgot your request, having failed to notice how private messages are distinguished.

The support ticket number was 2756923.

However, please do not trouble yourself on my account. As I expressed elsewhere, I suspect that I am entirely done with Wyze. I think I was already done when I began this thread. But I had not realized it until I had read Support’s most recent message.

Cheers,

19

Thank you for posting that. Sorry for all the frustration you’ve been through. Your log will go to the devs, and while they don’t always respond directly, it will help them to figure out why this strange event occurred and hopefully help someone else in the future to avoid having a similar experience, so I still appreciate you taking the time to submit your log and your feedback because it will indeed still be helpful. Support can’t actually read the logs, so when they tell you there is nothing further THEY can do, that doesn’t actually necessarily mean that Wyze isn’t going to do anything or that Wyze won’t look into it at all. They will pass on your logs and descriptions to the devs, and they will look into it and try to figure out what went wrong and create some fixes, etc to hopefully address a similar thing from happening to you or others in the future…but devs work mostly behind the scenes. So support is saying that they passed your log on, but at this point they personally don’t know what the devs are doing about it directly. I know Wyze has been looking into some way to let support have access to the logs and more info like that, but that will be a future update. I guess my point is, don’t necessarily mistake their “unable to offer further troubleshooting” to mean they aren’t going to do anything at all. They are simply telling you that on your end, there is nothing more they can tell you to do differently, and that the rest is up to the devs to figure it out and try to make it better. Maybe that will help your frustration a little…knowing that your efforts will still likely help reduce similar things occurring to others in the future.

Whether I see you around on here again in the future or not, you have my best wishes @wbmccarty :+1:
Thank you for your great description and getting me that support ticket number.

20

@wbmccarty
@carverofchoice was kind enough to direct me over to the issue you had with your HMS and support experience. I am going to dig into this Wednesday morning and see what I can find out about it.

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