Change is the only constant.Heraclitus observed that the natural world was in a constant state of movement.
Bubba
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Thank you @carverofchoice. Your letter really expresses what lots of us feel. Without detracting from anything you said, I just want to emphasize what is most important to me.
Interoperability is king, but a rules engine makes the kingdom governable.
Right now the only Wyze products I will buy are cameras and doorbells. The rest of my system is Smartthings which means that I have wide interoperability with devices from many manufacturers and they can all work together with the Sharptools rules engine. For my Wyze gear, I have to use IFTTT - if some Wyze trigger then tell Sharptools so it can muster some action. That means I am limited to those triggers and I have yet another place I have to go in the cloud.
I really only want to have rules in one place; not some in Smarthings, some in Wyze rules engine, some in IFTTT. So at the point where you decided that you would not integrate with Smartthings, I knew that my Wyze journey would be limited. I still use and recommend Wyze cameras because they represent great value, The cameras are affordable and good quality and the CamPlus subscription service also provides needed features and good value. But that’s it. I won’t buy a Wyze switch or presence sensor … because it does not talk to anything else.
I am guessing that Wyze felt they could create their own Apple-esque closed garden. “If we create every device anyone could want and it only talks to our stuff, then we won’t be competing as much with others.” That may have worked if you had a full fledged rules engine to release along with those goodies, but you don’t.
Broken promises
When I started with Wyze, person recognition was built in and not a subscription. Somehow your counsel didn’t secure this feature and I ended up having to pay for it as a subscription. Uh, OK, but couldn’t you have grandfathered in those cameras bought with the free person detection promise? Then I recently bought a v2 Doorbell which is promoted as an “upgrade” over the v1 Doorbell. I bought it only to find out that the Wyze Chime was no longer compatible. I had already removed my old pre-Wyze doorbell chime, so there was really no going back. What that said to me was, “we don’t care about our early adopter user base.” We voted with out dollars and bought Wyze when it was early and untested, but you abandoned us when it was convenient. That hurts.
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Since it was said for us to reply, here I go. 
When I was looking for some cameras, I ran across Wyze, maybe a Google search, but I was thinking, how good could they be for $25? I already had some smart plugs from another company but I wasn’t looking for any kind of connection between them at the time.
The family went on a New Year’s trip to the Cincinnati, Ohio area and the boys wanted to go to Microcenter. I saw a display there for the cameras and was asking a salesman about them. He happened to have one at his house and he pulled up the feed and I was blown away so I bought two. The problem I have now and didn’t know was that I have two types of smart devices from two different companies.
Keep in mind that Wyze was only a camera company at that time so smart plugs from them weren’t an option. A little later, I have to replace the HVAC in my house so why not a smart thermostat? Again, at that time, not an option from Wyze nor from the smart plug company, so now I have three products from three different companies.
I then moved and needed to take my products with me but not the thermostat since I left it with the new owner of my house in the new house I needed to buy a new one so since I already knew about the company I went with, I purchased the same one. Again, not an option from the other two companies.
Also in the new house, the light in the garage door opener won’t turn off. The switch on the box on the wall is broken so the old owners just removed the bulb. So I look at options and yet another company makes a retrofit kit to make it wireless. It won’t fix the light issue but now I don’t have to buy a bunch of extra remotes for my kids, they can just install the app. Again, not an option from the other smart device companies I have products from.
Now, to make all of these work together, I can use something like Home Assistant, which I am doing, or I have put go back and buy all new products to replace products that already work just fine just to use one system. That’s not happening. So my plans going forward are to keep using IFTTT with my Wyze cameras, of which I now have three, until they die and replace them with cameras that will work with Home Assistant.
I would like to continue using Wyze but until they open up full functionality with HA, I don’t see it happening. For me, Wyze was just too late to the game for some products, and forcing customers to only use their systems just won’t cut it. I know they have said they haven’t ruled it out but I just don’t see it coming at this point. Hopefully, that will change.
dj
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Get an ad blocker.
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I bought into Wyze in the very beginning. V1 I wanted a camera that would record video and not have additional costs after purchase. Wyze was perfect! I actually got more than I expected, features for free! In fact, I praised them so much, most of my friends bought cameras too. I no longer have the same feelings about Wyze, because I too refuse to pay a subscription for something I used to get for free.
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Thanks @carverofchoice. very insightful. 
I have been here about a year and have over 50 Wyze devices. … and still buying … I have been around home automation since early 90s. I have high hopes for Wyze … still.
and thanks to Wyze for your responses. This means a lot to see here.
I will be reading your post again a few times
along with the Wyze responses,
… and … their follow-up actions.
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My concerns are that the core functionality for non-subscription users has been taken away. The app is constantly breaking for me. Every update seems to fix one thing then break something else. I can’t do many of the things I was initially able to when I bought my cameras. 12 second clips have been gone for quite some time. I don’t get any video events, they’re all pictures, which isn’t a big deal, but trying to get to the event via the SD card is a pain. That was broken ages ago and I’m not taken to the time of the even, but seconds later and have to backtrack to find it. I used to be able to download the pictures of the events (sometimes I get some funny images of birds I want to save) and I can no longer do that. My Outdoor Cam is simply a trail cam now, with bad battery life, which is frustrating. The ads are annoying and intrusive and I feel that I’ve been dealt a bait and switch. When functionality I was initially given was taken away, and the app access to my cameras and SD cards is limited or removed, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. The night vision of these cameras is amazing and I do like being able to do time lapses when I want/need, but I can’t recommend products that regress because you don’t pay for a subscription – especially when that wasn’t part of the deal when they were purchased. I’d like to see Wyze bring back some of that original, promised functionality to the non-subscribers. I’m on a fixed income and can’t afford cam plus, etc. I also don’t use these cams for security, I have a system on my house that has a DVR that I don’t have to pay a subscription for that fills that purpose. My Wyze cams are supplemental and used mainly to see areas where I can’t get what I call my “house cams” set up and to watch the wildlife that traipses through my yard, and to catch celestial events like fireballs (I get a lot of those, which is fantastic), space station fly bys, etc. They were affordable, but newer pricing has them moving out of my reach to add in as many as I may want to watch specific areas around my house. I do so wish Wyze would move to being more like they started out. I understand you have to make money, but that’s all things seem to be about anymore and not about the functionality and usability of the product for the user.
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The $99/yr Cam Plus Unlimited plan may one day convince me to sign up.
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The hair-trigger one(s) that, when you try to close or swipe them away, open a browser window instead.
I asked a friend if there were any companies she felt ‘warm’ or ‘friendly’ toward. She almost immediately said, ‘Patagonia’ and referenced this:
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I think automated things like support bots and live agents tightly-tied to scripts can give people the sense you’ve stopped listening.
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I agree with most of the sentiments expressed in this thread. Like a lot of people, I have a diversified portfolio of devices. Wyze has become the only product line I own that doesn’t include integrations with SmartThings or Home Assistant - that’s what is pushing me to other brands. I can’t justify spending money on devices that are walled-off. I tell people that the products are great, but you’re buying a terrarium. Things will continue to thrive and grow inside the bottle while not interacting with what’s happening around it.
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I agree that Wyze has lost its way. The current “bait and switch” ads for cam plus unlimited discounts good for only 30 days are embarrassing and offensive. I feel sorry for people who fail to look at the minuscule fine print. If I didn’t have so much money already invested in cameras, I’d go a different direction.
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One thing to consider when cameras are either not connecting or having other problems is your network. I know it’s been said but that can cause a lot of problems. My cameras are good 95% of the time although I have had problems occasionally on certain firmwares but I do participate in the beta testing, so that can cause problems.
As far as Wyze in general, I have been around since 2017 when I bought my first v1. I beta tested the first pan cam and a couple of other products (bulbs, sensors). I think things have definitely changed since then, some good some bad. I don’t mind paying for the cam plus because the person detection has improved immensely since the first iteration and I understand it costs them money to have it and the cameras are cheap enough.
The biggest complaint I have is, what someone else said above, products coming out that seem to need updates from the beginning. Like they are still in beta.
I recently bought the new pan cam v3, which works ok but it has problems. The waypoints don’t work, I find it looking at my house most of the time instead of my driveway which is what the waypoint is set on. It chases shadows of limbs on the ground and my house (I’m not sure how that would be fixed 
). And it says camera has reached the end, when it’s not at the end a lot of the time.
I also just got the doorbell v2 to replace my v1 as I liked the new features. And ended up having to replace my transformer, so that the chime would ring but after that it has been great. They need to mention that in the setup instructions as well as on the website details.
One other thing, I contacted Wyze and spoke with someone on chat and asked if I could mount the new doorbell camera to the old base of the v1 and was told yes, I also asked if I could use the chime that came with the v1 and was told yes again. Both of those are untrue. I basically knew that wasn’t the case but was hoping. That is uncalled for and basically flat out lying to the customer. Part of the problem, I think, is that customer service people don’t understand what you are asking half the time and aren’t really trained, just reading from a script.
Thank you,
Jay
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The emails are also getting more and more annoying. I’ve received four emails in the past five days which were explicitly about the Facial Recognition feature (it’s in the subject line), and that’s with “Deals & Promotional Emails” disabled.
Between that, the high volume of promotional push notifications, and the in-app popups and boxes asking me to buy a service I already have, I’m increasingly tempted to disable all communications from Wyze. I’m willing to hear about new products, but only once each.
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Can you forward these emails to me? mvanswol@wyze.com, I’ll personally make sure your settings are correct in our backend and remove you from promotional emails.
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I have all the marketing emails enabled, but i have noticed that I sometimes get duplicate emails to the same address. Sometimes they are slightly different, so probably A/B testing or something, but they shouldn’t send the same one to the same people.
I will let you know next time this happens.
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Yeah we sometimes do A/B testing of messaging to see what performs better.
Oftentimes what happens is someone uses one email for checking out (like PayPal or Apple Pay) and then one email for the their Wyze account and boom… you have two email addresses in our system haha. We are actually working on merging everyone’s stuff so this happens less but it’s an intense process.
Apologies for the duplicates, if you wanna fire over some examples to mvanswol@wyze.com I’d be happy to take a look.
Matt Van Swol
Head of Subscription Growth
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I’ve seen you mention a couple times slab Slayer, that if you don’t have Cam plus you will only get a still of an event. I just purchased cam Plus for one camera the other day. All of a sudden my other camera is only giving me a still shot. Prior to purchasing the cam Plus they were both giving me 12 second video recordings. Are you saying that that doesn’t happen anymore? When did it change? As I said I’ve only had cam plus for a couple of days and it was working fine before that.
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It’s been at least two years that it’s been gone. Not sure how you were still getting 12 second video events if you’ve had the cameras past the trial CamPlus time frame.
Yes. Without a subscription, cams are limited to uploading a Thumbnail Image every 5 minutes. With Cam Plus Lite on compatible cams, that increases to a 12s video but still has a 5m cooldown.
There is no way to say for sure why the two cams were previously getting the 12s videos unless they were subscribed to Cam Plus Lite. There have been reports of cams that were previously on the “Legacy” plan, which included 12s uploads prior to the subscription change, remaining that way until some account or update randomly corrected them to Thumbnail images.
New cams without a subscription will not get any video uploads. Old cams were all supposed to be transitioned when the subscription tiers changed, but there have been reports of stragglers.
Coming up on 2 years ago.
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