So I been using Wyze cams for years now. I have a number of cams. At first you guys were all about adding features. I invested in Wyze based on your features, But everything is going to subscription based. I have a v2 camera that I now have to watch events the same way as a Pan v3? You can’t hi the play button right from the event screen. This is one of the biggest complaints I have over the Pan v3. This one of the reasons I haven’t purchased anymore cams. Now its applied to v2 cams? Why? Not long ago we could filter by people and now we can’t even do that. This is ridiculous. I use to promote your cams to others. But the features are getting downgraded and it is getting ridiculous to force us to pay a monthly fee for features we had and counted on. I would have never invested into this system if I known this was what was going to happen. I used your system because we didn’t have to pay monthly fees.
Wyze has to earn money to stay in business. They were not doing that on hardware sales alone - largely due to a VERY small profit margin. You may recall that Wyze almost went bankrupt a couple years back. Providing the cloud based services costs money. Welcome to reality.
Subscribe to CamPlus lite (specify cost of free and you can watch event videos. You want more capabilities, go with CamPlus.
Here is the thing, These features we paid for and purchased. It is not my fault as a consumer that they mismanaged finances. But what you don’t do is sell a product with a given set of features ad then one day take them away. This illegal. This would be the equivalent of say you purchase a car with power seats, power windows, and a radio. 3 year down the road because the company is having some financial problems them taking those away. Same exact concept. Reality is, I own the products, They sold a product, I purchased them, and I now own said product. They personal that sod the product no longer owns it or rights to it. So I am not sure what reality you live in, but that’s not how things operate. Can you imagine driving to work and after owning a car for 5 years and then the manufacture disables it and saids you must now pay a monthly fee to drive it again? This is essentially the same thing. What if I sold you a boat a few years ago.Do you honestly think I have a right to come back and say you must pay me a monthly fee to use it 3 years do the road? Give me a break.
I have CamPlus Lite. And no, I have to go through hopes now to watch a recent event like I do on a v3 cam pan camera. I have SD cards installed in all my cams. Their is absolutely no reason I shouldn’t be able to look at my events, click the camera with the event and not be able to hit the play button like I was always able to do with all my other cams except the v3 pan. Instead if you hit it now it wants you to pay a $2.99 monthly fee per camera? I have to hit the playback button now? This is absurd.
Few years ago I bought a firewall product with a lifetime subscription. Well, after a couple of years the company decided to stop supporting the product and came out with a new cloud-based subscription service. If I had gone to law school and have plenty of free time I might look into suing them somehow, but not gonna happen. Don’t see it happening to all the other duped customers either.
As for Wyze, I’m just thankful they continue to support V2s and Cam Plus Lite. It does cost money to support legacy products, and they can just come out one day and say they decided to stop supporting them (think Wyze sense V1). I highly doubt there can be a class action lawsuit filed against them. To be honest I spent a lot less money on Wyze than said firewall product, so I’m fine with what they offer now.
Ok, so clearly you see problem when such things happen to you as you explained.
But again, while you are obviously not effected by this specificity, you are taking a backseat road and condoning the actions. How does this make it better or help?
Certain features were promised to us. Their was a huge amount of controversy that happened when this subscription thing happened and they took away certain features and tried making the features we paid for subscription based. One of these was about person detection.
I don’t know the whole situation on the cam 1 cameras. But I believe they deactivated them based on security issues that weren’t properly addressed. But you don’t just deactivated the product remotely because of such and bricking the customers property without proper compensation. I don’t know if that happened exactly, or maybe they gave them v2 cams? I don’t know.But regardless, if say they have them v2 cams. Again,did these cams loose the functionality that they paid for with v1 cams? If so, then that’s a problem.
No one should feel “thankkful” for being allowed to use something that they paid for and own. It’s not a privileged, its a right.
Like I said, I paid for a product, based on a certain set of functionality. The product appears to be in working order. They have apparently deactivated certain features on their end. This is wrong.
I noticed on not only my other v3 cams, but I do have a other v2 cam that this feature is still their. This is something they disabled on their end for this camera. I am not paying a monthly fee for the features I was sold in full, sorry. I already have one bricked camera. It seems to operate, but simply will not connect to their app. This seemed to be a app/update problem. But because they playing the warranty card, their might not be much I can do as I can’t prove yet it is something on their end without probably tearing it down to make sure say it is communicating properly, just a issue with the software that they forced to update.
Here is the thing. When I purchased these cams, we could easily update the cams. Either through the app, or easily find the update file and manually update it. Their was a time I did have to manually update one of the cams as their system failed to update it properly.
We also had the ability to use a alternative firmware to RSTP. This was a other selling feature on these cams. Unfortunately it was very unstable, though some people seem to have had some success with it. But now it seems much harder to find the firmware.
Support was very little help because they want to sell new cams. I think my other cam just needs flashed with a good up to date firmware to be honest.
But this cam appears to be simply lacking features based on their software alone, not a hardware based issue. This isn’t the first time. In fact, I am supposed to be having person detection as I am a cam lite subscriber. Yet, I can’t filter by person? This was apparently deactivated in one of their “updates”.
So while the problems apparently don’t effect you, of courses easy to say your fine with it. But apparently by your example, when it does effect you, then your not fine with it. But don’t act like I should be great-full because I can still somewhat use a product because they allow my to.
But yes, it is illegal here n the US to offer and sell a product with a given set of features and then de-active them to sell that feature back to them. If I purchased a subscription based feature then fine, but I didn’t. I also have a subscription that includes certain features which I am not getting. This is wrong.
I’m not sure if Wyze has the Person filter grayed out on purpose. I see this other thread going on about the same issue for some Cam Plus subscribers:
I do agree with you that if Wyze grayed out Person filter on purpose, that is bad. Although legally they did not completely deactivate the feature, making it unusable for consumers is bad business.
EDIT: Although even if they did not gray it out on purpose, that’s still a pretty bad bug. But at least there’s hope they’ll fix it? I’m not seeing this issue though, even when I remove some cams from Cam Plus.