Wyze removed the 12sec event playback - Beware of Bait and Switch

Part of me buying the Wyze cam was there was a 12 sec event recorded playback. I see they now removed it and force you to pay if you want what was initially included in the purchase.

Nobody is forced to pay anything.
Users may select “$0” and have everything we had before for free (12 second event playback), and get person detection completely for free too if we want it as well (we don’t have to use it though if we don’t want to).

Here’s the explanation and walkthrough from the Wyze Co-founder:

How to Keep Your Cloud Video Recordings Free with Cam Plus Lite

Hope that helps.

7 Likes

Maybe someone spoke too soon? Please, consider it no big deal. Pretty much standard occurrence these days on social media.

I agree with you. We bought these cams for indoor 2 years ago and like you we bought specifically because of the 12 sec event reviews available. I followed the instruction for the free service but it is still not working and continually asks me to assign cameras which I have already done. This is getting to be a big inconvenience.

Here is my 2 cents worth as a long time Wyze customer (4 years).

There are 3 options as I see it:

  1. Put SD cards in your cameras (if you haven’t already). When you get an alert, click on the thumbnail and view the playback from the local SD card. Cost = $0
  2. Get Cam Plus Lite set up (yes, it is a confusing and a bit of a pain). Then you get the 12 second cloud clips. You should still have an SD card in the camera, IMO. Cost = as low as $0.
  3. Get the Cam Plus Unlimited plan. That will allow up to 99 cameras to get the full features of Cam Plus. Cost = $99 / year.

Personally, I debated which way to go. I settled on the Unlimited plan and put basically all of my outdoor cameras (16) on it. That leaves me with 84 additional licenses to use, This may come in handy if I place cameras on my rental properties.

1 Like

Its sad when you buy a cam for specific features and then all of a sudden they fall back on their agreement and take everything away …The only reason anyone bought these cameras was for the free 12 second cloud storage and no cool down…Now they have taken it all away and want you to pay for something they said was free!!! …Straight up terrible company …Getting rid of my cams…At least other companies are decent to tell you up front their charges ,Not this company …Im done !!

1 Like

Also remember the long cool down period now …Thats nicely hidden!!

You can still get the free 12 second recordings it is called CamPlus Lite. Without CamPlus (a paid subscription service) there has always been a 5 minute cool down unless you are recording to an SD card installed in the camera.

1 Like

I do not know about anyone else, but after all these changes, clicking on the thumbnail did nothing for me but display a useless picture, To get the playback on the SD card, I had to scroll thought the timeline for each camera.

They should add buttons that go to the previous and next detected motion segments instead of those useless – to me anyway – 30 second buttons. Heck, the pause/play button seems to work only half the time.