This morning I ordered a Wyze Cam thru their website. No extended warranty was offered. Later that evening, I checked via my Wyze phone app and while placing the same order for a Wyze Cam, it offered an extended warranty. I contacted the support and long story short, they could not give me the extended warranty. I have to return the order I placed this morning and ordered the same thing via my phone app and got my extended warranty. Customer service could not add it to my order placed earlier in the day. I advised them after my call with them, I will contact my bank and dispute the charge. My bank will issue them a chargeback, they will not get paid and hopefully I won’t have to deal with returning the item. This company has gotten so big that customer service is no longer a priority. I love their products but you don’t want to have to call or chat with service, because they can’t do anything for you. Sad situation.
I hear the frustration here, though I personally avoid nearly all “extended warranties” like the plague…I’ve looked into the research and I don’t really believe in them. Still, if a person wants an extended warranty, I support them being able to get one in some way.
I will say that I have worked customer service for several fortune 500 companies in the past, including in training roles and in my experience, this is actually fairly standard customer service for many companies when a person wants to change what they originally ordered, regardless of the reason for the change. Almost every company I worked for would’ve done the same thing: to process a return for the order that was previously made (and agreed to at the time) and have the person re-order with what they changed their mind to now. From a company’s perspective, they acted in good faith and fulfilled their side of the agreement and sent the person exactly what they ordered, and now that person changed their mind and the company is happy to help them with that change, but there are processes that need to happen to make that change appropriately. There may be some businesses that will do things differently (particularly if the extended warranty isn’t through a partner but is directly through them), but in my vast experience being on both sides of requests just like this, the majority of companies do things the way Wyze just offered (return the old order, get a refund and reorder with the way you want it now). They aren’t saying no to the change, they are just saying their system requires the order change to go through the agreements organically and normally, probably partially because the extended warranties are actually done through an entirely different company (not Wyze) and their integration may only be implemented through a particular online checkout procedure, and not available as some ala-carte method as is being assumed and that company may even not ALLOW Wyze to add a warranty onto a past order in order to prevent fraud from people try to only add stuff AFTER they need it, instead of in anticipation of it (there is a ton of warranty fraud nowadays, so the warranty company probably requires this limitation themselves, and Wyze has no choice). You can even often get the new order in before you return the old one, so you never go without the item and Wyze gives full money back refunds, so it’s really quite simple. I’ve done it several times.
I mean, people can do anything they want, but as a business owner, myself, whenever anyone disputes a credit card charge, The payment processer will always notify the company and give them a chance to respond why they should deny the reversal. In this case, having been on both sides of Credit Card disputes, it seems like it would be pretty easy for Wyze to send a transcript of the support call and receipts and tracking info proving you received the item as ordered, there was no reported defect and refused to return it. In my experience, most credit card companies will ultimately deny such reversal requests with so much evidence when all a person needs to do to get a refund is return the item. But you never know. Some companies don’t bother to respond to reversal notices.
I don’t work for, speak for or represent Wyze in any way, and I have no information on what they do, but speaking as someone who has owned and consulted with multiple other businesses, the risk on your side from a payment reversal in a case like this is:
- A lot of companies will just freeze or ban the account of anyone who reverses payments, maybe add new fees that need to be paid for anyone to use that account or those devices ever again. It can totally go from being a dispute about a single device to essentially bricking every single device you have as they blacklist the MAC addresses as fraudulent and ban them in their server.
- In this case, you specifically admitted publicly online that you ordered and agreed to the product in your order without a warranty the first time and Wyze delivered it exactly as agreed to. Later you changed your mind when you found out that extended warranties are an option. Wyze offered to make this happen (return it and get a refund and reissue with the warranty), but this offer was refused and it’s now stated that you will take the money back and keep the item you received and was delivered in good faith as it was actually ordered. This is risky because in many jurisdictions this could be perceived as intent to commit fraud/theft with a confession in a public forum that is likely (but maybe not) registered to the same email address as the Wyze account in dispute? IDK, but at this point, if it were me, I would probably not risk a payment dispute.
I am going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume this post is mostly just a vent post though. I can totally understand someone changing their mind about something and feeling frustrated at things happening differently than would’ve been preferred. I do think the anger is misplaced at Wyze and customer service though. Again, while I don’t work for Wyze, my experience tells me that the Extended warranty company they partnered with doesn’t even ALLOW them to backdate a warranty onto a past purchase that didn’t include it at checkout. Warranty companies suffer from a lot of fraud attempts related to people trying to back-add things only after they have a problem, so this is a common policy and it would be a mistake to be mad at Wyze or punish them for something they’re probably not even ALLOWED to do.
Still, I hope you can get things to workout more like you’d like them. Sorry to hear you were frustrated over this. If you’re really dissatisfied, at least Wyze does offer a way to get full refunds within 30 days if we notice something isn’t meeting our expectations.
Best of luck 
I have owned a lot of devices over the years that I had the option to buy an extended warranty. The ONLY thing I bought an extended warranty for was a Panasonic plasma TV. The technology was brand new (I paid over 4K for a 42”) and the store I bought it from had their own in house warranty. It cost about $300 and had a stipulation that if I never used the warranty, at the end of the warranty period I would receive store credit for what I paid for the warranty.
The company was Ultimate Electronics. They folded years ago.
The TV was still working great when I upgraded to a 55” Samsung that cost about 1/8 what I paid for the plasma. I couldn’t get $50 for it on craigslist so I gave it to a man that washes cars at a used car lot.
Its ashamed that WYZE ties their agents hands to provide customer support. I just called in for support and was informed that my issue MUST go to email support. The turn around will be 24-48 hours. Now I have to go back/forth with emails over several days in order to remedy my home monitoring service issue.
A month ago, they put me on their blacklist for ordering products. They said my orders were fraud and cancelled my order immediately and refunded my charges back to my credit card. Funny how it was immediate when most of us have to wait days for them to refund us. I just ordered what I wanted via Amazon; and got a warranty that WYZE did not offer.
Soon it will be time to move away from WYZE and go with another company that offers ACTUAL CUSTOMER SUPPORT.
Chester
As others have said in their opinions, only buy warranties on something with a high price tag. All Wyze products are easily affordable and easily replaceable.
I do get extended warranty on my 4K TV because I can’t repair 4K TVs and it could make a dent in my wallet. I find warranties generally useless. Althought my 4K TV died two years after purchase, I got a newer replacement at no cost.
I once was offered extended warranty at Circuit City for a pack of batteries. I declined.
A lot of customer service died during the plague. Luckily, there are helpful people in forums to give you the correct answer or at least some hope.
I would like to see how Roku handles their support issues, being essentially the same camera.
FYI, all Wyze devices already come with a 1 year warranty (Some bulbs even have warranties longer than that). Wyze has offered extended warranties in the past through the “Extend Protection Plan”…I’m not sure if they still do that.
As far as Extended Warranties go…just some food for thought for people to consider generally: I’ll explain why I am personally against extended warranties for the most part (barring rare situations where I am confident I’m going to use it and it will be more profitable for me).
Ext.Warranties often don’t cover very much, have a lot of red tape and exist strictly because they are not generally worth it. As an example, let’s say a hypothetical device has a 10% of dying within 3 years, and you have 10 of them, so for an extended warranty, they charge you 20% more to have each of them covered for 2 extra years. Basically, you paid for 2 extra cameras, but you don’t get to keep them. Now when your 1 in 10 stop working, the Extended Warranty company will enforce as much small print as possible when they give you 1 back…maybe they will just offer a gift card for the cost of one (often not counting shipping), or may give you a refurbished one, or they will only give you the amount you paid for it on special pricing but not give you the full cost needed to get a new one now when it’s not on special, or maybe the model you need a replacement for is no longer being sold, but they’ll only give you the equivalent of what it was last selling for on clearance and you have to foot the balance to get a replacement for the new model, or many other ways extended warranties cheat users with fine print, etc in order to turn a successful business profit.
So, now, for the cost of 12 devices (10 plus the equivalent of 2 more you paid to have an extended warranty), you’ve only received 11 devices. But for that same cost, you could’ve had 12 and kept 2 spares on hand. Or you could’ve bought 10, and put aside the cost of 2 more in case you need to replace one, or put it in an investment like the S&P500 ETF or whatever and earned money back/interest while you wait to need that money. Point is that, financially, it usually doesn’t sense to buy an Extended Warranty since it is not only a gamble, but the odds are strongly in the 3rd party Ext.Warranty company’s favor or they wouldn’t even offer it in the first place. They offer it specifically because mathematically, it is a good deal to them and rip off to us or they would change the amount required to get it until it is more profitable for them.
Anyway, those are things I always consider when offered an extended warranty. I think that usually the original warranty is sufficient and once in a while an electronic has a problem, but if I’ve NEVER bought an extended warranty, then I’ve already saved up way more money than I would’ve wasted on those warranties and can just buy my own rarely needed replacement with that saved money.
I’m not saying I never get them. I have gotten them for my house and a used car before because the cost to get them was so low and the car and my pool pump were HIGHLY likely to use the warranty and make my money back within the first few months…it was a smart purchase for me then. I saved TONS of money getting an extended warranty in those situations. So I am not 100% against them, but there are times it’s a fantastic deal and times it’s not.
In this case, if I had been having a lot of troubles with a company’s devices like chesterburks describes, I might be tempted to get an extended warranty too if I felt like my experience with the company implies I’m highly likely to have problems with the device(s) and thus I’m highly likely to save myself money because of it.