Wait…someone forgot to tell me I’m a Wyze employee and am getting paid to be here?
@fmills1d summarized it really well (thanks).
FWIW I told a Wyze cofounder (who told me I should apply to work for them) that they couldn’t afford me as an employee & they’d have to pay me such a high amount to switch from owning my own businesses to go work for them that it would be an outrageously bad decision to hire me as an employee. So it will almost definitely never happen. I’d be more likely to buy up Wyze stock (Pre-IPO) in the future and own a piece of them as an owner/investor, than I would be to become an employee. But right now I am none of those things. I’m just a regular Wyze user that helps people.
If it matters, to help demonstrate the above, I do post clear criticisms of Wyze when and where I feel it warranted such as this popular post about Wyze has lost it’s way. I have given some fairly harsh criticism about other things too, such as their decision to paywall the V4’s Local/Edge AI instead of making it free for everyone like their competitors, and a recent issue where they were going to stop allowing shared account to control the HMS status, and I harshly criticized them for that decision, and they reversed it the same day. Oh yes, I certainly stand up against their decisions when I believe they are clearly in the wrong. But the fact is that I truly don’t think they make a lot of really bad mistakes. I have cameras from 6 camera companies, and I think Wyze does an incredible job. They don’t pay me to say that, it is just my genuine opinion.
Wyze doesn’t require forum volunteers to be blind Yes-men. We are allowed to have our own opinions. Mostly, we are chosen because we have long demonstrated we are fairly knowledgeable about and have experience with many of their products and have demonstrated being willing to use our knowledge to help people troubleshoot. It’s more of a recognition by Wyze that we’re already “mavens” related to their products as well as a long history of helping people who are looking for help. That’s really what a Maven/Mod is (Additionally, Mods also help with a lot of forum maintenance and more). I have seen there are actually several companies that do this sort of thing now. It’s not exclusive to Wyze.
We also have some extra access to escalate certain issues directly to some employees if said issue meets certain qualifications such as support making an obvious mistake against their policies or when there is an escalating pattern of a confirmed high-impact issue that is not an edge-case/isolated incident (which should generally go through support). It’s okay not to like us for being fans of Wyze though. I know it’s annoying when someone wants to vent and someone else doesn’t agree with the venting, criticism, or that it can be frustrating when one person has an issue and it’s not being experienced by others.
I don’t know why some people have SD cards having problems…I have over 50 Wyze cameras now with every model camera, and have been running many of them since early 2020 (most of them are even non-endurance cards), and still haven’t had a single SD card get corrupted in all this time. But it is clear that plenty of others do. I wish I knew what the difference was.
SD cards themselves already tell us if they are for a security camera or not in the warranty terms. I know most people who use larger endurance cards have reported that solving their issues, so if someone is having this issue, I would consider getting a larger card with the “Endurance” label on it and hopefully that will resolve the issue. I think it’s difficult for Wyze to list specific cards when there are so many variations of cards out there and they may perform differently in different camera models, etc. And there are so many people who aren’t having problems with SD cards too. But pretty much all SD cards say on their own warranty that they are not meant to be used with Security cameras unless they are an “Endurance” card. So if someone is wanting to know what kind of card to use in a security camera, I would check what the card says in the warranty details. If it says a security camera voids the warranty, then don’t use that card. That will be basically every single SD card that doesn’t say “Endurance” on it. That is probably the answer you’re looking for. I’d also recommend getting larger Endurance cards instead of smaller ones. They will last longer that way.
I personally don’t use Endurance cards in most of my 1080p cameras, and they’ve been fine, but I have started buying them for all of the 2.5K cameras now, so that could very well be why I don’t see this issue, myself.
If you are concerned about this, you can always use a different email address and they won’t know who you are. But if it helps, Wyze addressed this concern in a Youtube AMA back on October 29, 2020…they have implemented safeguards with permissions to make sure that employees are blocked from viewing the cameras. Even the employees actively developing their system don’t usually have permissions granted to them to directly download the cloud videos (let alone the live stream). They said they selectively temporarily grant that permission on rare occasions when a user’s support ticket requires it…or presumably if they get a court order (they didn’t say this, but I think it’s legally implied). So, last we were told, none of the support employees or even the senior Engineers or anyone like that have any access to your camera videos unless 1) you submit the video through the app, 2) it’s granted to them on a very restrictive basis reviewed by upper management because of a support ticket or something, etc. They’re definitely not going to grant that to someone for a forum post.
Seriously though, try a larger Endurance card that says it is made for a security camera and see if that solves your issues. Most people report that it does.