While I am empathetic to the issue in this thread, as a person who owns multiple businesses and works with many others in a B2B relationship with businesses as my clients, I have to honestly point out that while BBB ratings used to be useful, they are almost meaningless to most companies nowadays. Some of the older consumers still look them up or post things there out of remembering the old days when the BBB mattered, but most of society and most businesses mostly dismiss and ignore them (unless they have a large number or older customers who are more likely to still trust the BBB out of nostalgia).
BBB have suffered a lot of criticism in recent times as detailed in this dropdown for anyone who actually cares why I say that.
- They have a lot of Conflict of Interest issues related to their funding model and have been found to be unreliable as they treat businesses differently as long as they bribe them…I mean pay their accreditation membership fees.
- Rating system is arbitrary and flawed and it’s been proven that many businesses maintain high ratings as long as they pay their bribes and simply respond to complaints even if they never resolve anything.
- No neutrality or impartiality since it treats businesses differently depending on whether they’re paying BBB the protection extortion fees…I mean, membership fees to “Monitor” things for them.
- Several businesses with serious legal issues or even government actions still maintain high BBB ratings, while others who don’t pay are often rated low (to scare them into paying), which totally undermines their credibility.
- Closed without resolution. A lot of consumers have reported that their complaints are often closed without any resolution, especially if it’s a paying member company.
Some research has even indicated that competitors will do corporate warfare against their biggest competitors and hire a service to get their competitor rated poorly, including on the BBB as well as elsewhere, and since the company doesn’t even regularly monitor the BBB it will easily get an F rating instantly.
Note that the BBB admits that Wyze is not paying their membership extortion fees (ie: “Not accredited”) which is known to mean that the BBB often treats those companies worse, and usually means the company doesn’t really monitor the BBB because it’s become generally irrelevant in the business/consumer world. An F rating usually only means that the company doesn’t monitor the BBB. Companies and consumers care a lot more about things like Google and Amazon ratings.
- Eufy/Anker is also rated with an F (not accredited)
- Reolink is also rated with an F (not accredited) on both of their BBB listings, despite several people singing their praises on here so often.
- Ring is Rated an A- despite having a long list of government actions and security failures listed against them and at least 3x as many complaints because they are paying the protection racket extortion fees to have someone monitor and respond. Which honestly is fair in many ways, but a BBB rating is not able to be indicative of an overall company rating.
- Arlo is also accredited, so again it’s no surprise that they are rated with an A+ … UNLESS you check their SEPARATE profiles for Arlo Support or Arlo Technologies, Inc (with a comma), and since those profiles for them are not accredited, suddenly they have an F rating since they aren’t accredited.
- Vivint is a B+ on their linked accredited profiles, and rated F on non-accredited profiles.
Pretty much 90% of BBB profiles go this way…if they have an accredited profile, they have a higher rating, if they don’t pay the “protection money” extortion membership fees and don’t keep up on that page (they don’t even have to actually SOLVE any complaints, just make sure to read/respond), then they are usually rated F even if they’re an awesome company or complaints are competitors waging corporate warfare…until they pay the BBB fees, and then their rating score magically goes up.
I think the frustration and concern posted here in this thread can stand on it’s own merits without trying to leverage outside sources. It is reasonable to be upset that the base station is no longer available and that it effectively makes all the other WCO’s non-functional. That will be understandably frustrating to anyone. I have seen this exact same thing happen with other camera and smart home companies that used base stations or hubs too. For example, Arlo took a lot of heat for this exact same thing when they had cameras that used a hub and then stopped making them and people had hubs die and they couldn’t/wouldn’t replace them, leaving some users with a ton of cameras that were suddenly non-functional. There are several other examples from companies too, and I think everyone can agree that is aggravating. Some people avoid hubs/base stations for this reason.
This is why I posted the potential solution for you to buy a base station from eBay or something, connect your WCO’s that way, then if you are still understandably upset, you will at least be able to get everything back online, then delete all the cameras from your app while they’re online and be able to resell them all and make some more of your money back. Wyze WCO’s still sell for a surprisingly good amount of money used. Then you could use that money to switch to another company if that is your desire now, or if you are happy that your cameras work again like they used to, you could choose to keep using them instead. I was just trying to give you the best options I could think off since it seems Wyze is limiting the resolution to a $20 gift card since they stopped selling the hubs now. I wish I had a better solution for you though. I will certainly make sure to share your experience with employees when the topic comes up.
