I’m not sure I am qualified to make complete conclusion on what I think such a response SHOULD be, and no matter what answer I give, others will disagree or want something different. I can see valid arguments from multiple points of view on this issue. A proper reaction will be fairly subjective.
Having said that, there have been people in the forum who said they were offered by Wyze support something very similar to what you suggested…credit toward the purchase of replacements to the new version should they choose to upgrade. I am guessing that was offered to people who were still under warranty for the V1’s, but I can give a hearsay report anyway. If I talked to someone who 10 non-functioning sensors I would first recommend they contact Support and ask if they have any discretionary options available to them. If they don’t, I would then suggest they read this thread since many people have figured out that there is a $5 solution to fix sensors, which is a great deal. If it is too complicated for them, I would suggest asking an electronically inclined acquaintance if they could help do it. If they don’t want to do that, I would recommend they try to sell the brown-out sensors to someone, either someone who is willing to fix them themselves or someone who uses Home Assistant and would just use them there. That way the person would get some of their money back to put into new sensors (whether V2 sensors or another brand or whatever they are looking for).
Having said that, if I were Wyze, I would consider offering customers partial store credit for returned V1 sensors that had a brownout. I don’t know how much they should offer or for how long. That’s supposed to be what a warranty is for in general…a computer manufacturer couldn’t promise a full original refund for any of their computers that wear out over time for the lifetime of the computer for example, but most have a reasonable warranty period where they will replace it. After that, the owner needs to figure out other options. Other electronics are similar. Wyze would have to be able to verify if this is the original owner and if they bought them through Wyze, and how long ago they were originally activated. A partial store credit for their return could be reasonable, except that the postage would cost more than it’s worth, so it’s not worth doing that, but if they don’t make them return it, then people could be fraudulent about it…though they could blacklist that sensor, people could just sell them to a home assistant user after they get the credit. There is a lot of potential for a company with low profit margins to get screwed over badly in a game like this. HOWEVER, offering store credit also gives potential for them to get ongoing revenue from the user who may then buy their V2 sensor system, so in the long run it could pay off for the company profit wise, also give them good PR for exchanging the bad sensors, etc. So yeah, it definitely warrants consideration. Someone would have to run the numbers and figure out how to limit the fraud potential for it, but your idea does have merit and potential to be a win-win for both the customers and the company. But again, it’s a complex answer and they’d need to run some estimates to make sure it’s feasible, and where to draw the lines. Do you refund for a sensor that worked for 4 years before dying out naturally? OR just those under warranty, or where do they draw the line? How to make sure they aren’t being ripped off and lied to? Those are all things that would have to be figured out.
Here’s the remarkably short thread where I found out about the special cable. I fished it out now hoping that we could simply ask other people who’d tried, but this seems more niche than I thought.
Your anecdotal evidence on the lack of Home Assistant PC-powered Wyze bridge sensor failures still seems compelling.
(This arose in context of bridge stability, not avoiding low battery death, so your new theory lends a whole new facet to the tableau.)
Edit:
The linked, even older thread does have more participation.
there is no cable that can fix “bricked” v1 contact sensors. the usb cable idea is for those using Home Assistant instead of the Wyze app. Home Assistant can talk to “bricked” Wyze contact sensors without issues (they arent quite “bricked”, see below). its only the Wyze App that refuses to talk to them. If you are interested John, please vote for amending the Wyze App to likewise be able to interface with “bricked” sensors.
to fix contact sensors for use with the Wyze App, you need to buy a TI programmer card, or equivalent
(ppl here in this thread mention a number of alternatives)
Even though it took a while to get through your response, I do like what you said. Fraudulent requests for replacement items or for refund will always exist as long as there are people.
I don’t know the answer but I put the suggestion out there as a way for Wyze to have more good PR
After all I think we can all agree that there’s enough bad PR to last a lifetime
No, talking about different and related things. I’m talking about using a split cable to provide steady power to the bridge while its data lines are still connected traditionally to the back of a V2 camera.
I put Buzzkill on my phone and set up a rule that if any notification from the Wyze app has the word “battery” in the notification, don’t allow the notification to be swiped away. Then it pins the notification for me and I have to tap a “Dismiss” link which ensures I never accidentally miss a Battery notification.
carver, are you talking about Wyze lock battery notifications? As I have never got a wyze V1 sensor low battery notification in android. This is corroborated by greymoment in this weekends post;
I just very recently told Buzzkill to pin ALL battery notifications from Wyze, so not limited to a certain device.
I have definitely received low battery notifications for the V1 sensors in the past and even very recently within the last few weeks. Within the last month or two I have replaced the battery on at least 3 units and did receive a notification for each of them.
If this has stopped then it is a bug that was introduced very recently and should be reported. Or maybe notifications were turned off or something? IDK…I can only tell you that I have received notifications for V1 contact sensors low battery alerts from at least 3 different devices very recently. Usually I ignore them for a couple of days and they just kept sending me messages until I replaced it, so I got multiple notices from each. Though I think on all of them I have the “Notifications” turned on, and then just turn off all the options under it (ie: Open/closed, etc) as I assumed if I turned off the main notification toggle that I might not get battery notices. That is why I was saying that maybe they had notifications toggled off and that’s why there was a difference? Just guessing. It would be good to know!
Now that you mention it, I think I remember something a long time ago about grouped sensors not sending battery notifications for some reason. That must be the problem.
as greymoment has corroborated in his observations, the low battery notifications for contact sensors are not working properly. Not having those notifications means the sensor will eventually end up bricked.
Surely this is / should have been a priority bug fix !?!?
maybe Wyze can look at the code used to push these notifications
they are displayed with no problems
as that looks to be for windows only
