Canary - DO NOT BUY - Danger of relying on cloud services

bk

So I'm afraid that I have to warn people off buying Canary Security Camera products.

Despite the hardware being excellent, I've never been fully happy with this company and their introduction of new features.

But what they have done of the past two days really takes the biscuit.

This product was sold on the advertising of needing no contracts, etc. and gave you 12 hours of free recording's.

They have now gotten rid of that and for free you now only get 10 second previews of notifications. They have also removed night time mode and a bunch of other features that were previously part of the free plan.

You now have to pay $10 per month for these features. More then Nest Cameras which are actually better and give you more for your money, IMO.

Never mind the free options from Logitech, Arlo and Blink.

Their users in their community are up in arms about this and their treatment of their angry users has been terrible.

This really feels like a terrible bait and switch.

I strongly recommend against people buying from this company.

Unfortunately this shows the dangers on buying equipment that relies on cloud services, their is no guarantee that it will continue to work in future or that the company wont shaft you in future.

TitianGerm

bk wrote: »

So I'm afraid that I have to warn people off buying Canary Security Camera products.

Despite the hardware being excellent, I've never been fully happy with this company and their introduction of new features.

But what they have done of the past two days really takes the biscuit.

This product was sold on the advertising of needing no contracts, etc. and gave you 12 hours of free recording's.

They have now gotten rid of that and for free you now only get 10 second previews of notifications. They have also removed night time mode and a bunch of other features that were previously part of the free plan.

You now have to pay $10 per month for these features. More then Nest Cameras which are actually better and give you more for your money, IMO.

Never mind the free options from Logitech, Arlo and Blink.

Their users in their community are up in arms about this and their treatment of their angry users has been terrible.

This really feels like a terrible bait and switch.

I strongly recommend against people buying from this company.

Unfortunately this shows the dangers on buying equipment that relies on cloud services, their is no guarantee that it will continue to work in future or that the company wont shaft you in future.

We discovered this last night. Were not very happy at all to be honest. We were thinking of adding a Flex or two in the coming weeks but I think we'll be going in a different direction now.

Apparently there was an email sent in September outlining the changes which I never received.

bk

Yes, I was also considering buying more devices from them, certainly won't now.

But I have to say I'm not surprised, over the last year they have done some other ****ty moves that made me question this company, but I was willing to give them the benefit of my doubt. But this latest move really took the biscuit.

Given the strength of feeling from the community about this. I'd say this company might not last long, it really feels like they have shot themselves in the foot and lost all trust.

TitianGerm

bk wrote: »

Given the strength of feeling from the community about this. I'd say this company might not last long, it really feels like they have shot themselves in the foot and lost all trust.

I expect plenty of 50% off discount codes to be issued for the membership to try and appease current customers.

I doubt any new consumer will pick Canary now over Nest etc and the biggest problem is current users won't add any more devices.

TitianGerm

I bought my Canary about 5 months ago from Amazon. I wonder could I return it now as it's no longer working as described? Probably not I'd guess.

bk

emmetkenny wrote: »

I expect plenty of 50% off discount codes to be issued for the membership to try and appease current customers.

I doubt any new consumer will pick Canary now over Nest etc and the biggest problem is current users won't add any more devices.

Yes, but I'm not sure it will be enough. I can't see why anyone would buy this over Nest now or one of the other free options.

Really what they should have done is grandfathered in existing customers, even if they wanted to start charging new customers. To be honest I'm not sure how legal this is in Europe. They say it is part of their TOS, however in my experience, that doesn't really fly in Europe. It feels too close to false advertising and bait and switch.

Also I think they also need a cheaper plan then €10 per month for even new customers. They say they are just charging the same as their competitors, Nest. But Nest is a premium player in the market with a premium product and the backing and integration with Google.

Canary certainly have non of that. They had serious problems last week with their servers being down and not sending event notifications, not good. They are basically a small time player trying to act like they are a Google/Apple. Not smart IMO.

No matter what they do now, they have certainly lost my trust.

bk

emmetkenny wrote: »

I bought my Canary about 5 months ago from Amazon. I wonder could I return it now as it's no longer working as described? Probably not I'd guess.

Other people have done that already, though in the US. Certainly worth a try. Amazon tend to be good about these sort of things, but you might have to do some arguing about it.

TitianGerm

bk wrote: »

Other people have done that already, though in the US. Certainly worth a try. Amazon tend to be good about these sort of things, but you might have to do some arguing about it.

Just checked again and I bought in July 2017 so I only have it three months.

Very disappointed I have to say but I was happy with the camera/service.

May consider another option now.

bk

emmetkenny wrote: »

Very disappointed I have to say but I was happy with the camera/service.

Yes the camera itself was always excellent. The service was decent, but not perfect (last weeks outage for instance).

I've always had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand the hardware was excellent and just did what it was supposed to do, but I always felt that there was something off about the company.

They never did integrate with IFTTT, GHome, Alexa. They promised Apple HomeKit support and it still hasn't come to this day.

The also sold the device with a 2 way mic and advertised it, but it took them over a year and a half to activate it and when they finally did, they made it a paid only feature!

And now this. All very shady IMO.

emmetkenny wrote: »

May consider another option now.

I perhaps shouldn't recommend anything to you, given this incident. But I have a Logi Circle Camera too and I've been very happy with it. Now I haven't been using it as a security camera, rather a baby monitor, but it has worked well. I most now try it as a security camera too and consider replacing the Canary with another one.

TitianGerm

bk wrote: »

Yes the camera itself was always excellent. The service was decent, but not perfect (last weeks outage for instance).

I've always had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand the hardware was excellent and just did what it was supposed to do, but I always felt that there was something off about the company.

They never did integrate with IFTTT, GHome, Alexa. They promised Apple HomeKit support and it still hasn't come to this day.

The also sold the device with a 2 way mic and advertised it, but it took them over a year and a half to activate it and when they finally did, they made it a paid only feature!

And now this. All very shady IMO.



I perhaps shouldn't recommend anything to you, given this incident. But I have a Logi Circle Camera too and I've been very happy with it. Now I haven't been using it as a security camera, rather a baby monitor, but it has worked well. I most now try it as a security camera too and consider replacing the Canary with another one.

Emailed Amazon and I had a reply in 15 minutes. They are going to refund the full amount so no complaints there.

I was going with the Circle last time and changed to the Canary because of the bigger discount.

I'll hang on now until Black Friday and see what crops up.

bk

That is fantastic Emmet, very glad to hear it. I picked up the Circle for about €70 during black friday sales last year, so worth keeping an eye out.

TitianGerm

bk wrote: »

That is fantastic Emmet, very glad to hear it. I picked up the Circle for about €70 during black friday sales last year, so worth keeping an eye out.

Might look for something that can integrate with an alarm system and move away from Phone Watch.

Stoner

bk wrote:

No matter what they do now, they have certainly lost my trust.

I'm not happy,

Not only do I have one, I bought three as gifts.

I noticed how short the playback was

Not happy at all

Stoner

You can't even share the short videos now either

TitianGerm

Stoner wrote: »

You can't even share the short videos now either

Where did you buy? Do you have them long?

I got onto Amazon and have a refund approved so hopefully you can get sorted as well.

Stoner

emmetkenny wrote:

Where did you buy? Do you have them long?

Amazon, January sales

TitianGerm

Stoner wrote: »

Amazon, January sales

Email them and say some of the features are no longer working and ask for a refund on account.

Potential-Monke

Before I start, I want to say it was a really bad move bringing old accounts with the previous free benefits onto the new account. No doubt. But... I also like.playing devils advocate.

I read through their T&Cs, and it does state that the services can change at any time. That's how they're covered.

I have one myself, and I think it's an excellent bit of kit for the price. And €10 a month is good value, imo, for the benefits. But I also knew what I was buying. It's an extra piece of mind, but not a replacement for a proper security system. Compared to Eir (very different but same basic premise), it's way cheaper.

And it's an IoT device, so you have the reliability of the internet and cloud services to question and consider, so outages are expected (maybe not as many as Canary are having, but they're still relatively new to this market).

And the end of the day, they're a small company trying to fight the big corporation's, and I applaud them for that. It's why I went with them, competition and rooting for the underdog. People will always complain that they're not getting premium features for free. Think about how much it costs to upload, maintain and manage 500,000 uploads each day! The server fees must be astronomical. Add people streaming on top of the uploads, and you've even bigger downloads!

As I said above, bad form for the older plans, it should have been given more notice, like saying now that it's changing in January. Give people time to look around and decide to leave or stay. But I understand the need to have more subscriptions, they need to pay to maintain, and they won't get that from sales alone.

TitianGerm

Potential-Monke wrote: »

Before I start, I want to say it was a really bad move bringing old accounts with the previous free benefits onto the new account. No doubt. But... I also like.playing devils advocate.

I read through their T&Cs, and it does state that the services can change at any time. That's how they're covered.

I have one myself, and I think it's an excellent bit of kit for the price. And €10 a month is good value, imo, for the benefits. But I also knew what I was buying. It's an extra piece of mind, but not a replacement for a proper security system. Compared to Eir (very different but same basic premise), it's way cheaper.

And it's an IoT device, so you have the reliability of the internet and cloud services to question and consider, so outages are expected (maybe not as many as Canary are having, but they're still relatively new to this market).

And the end of the day, they're a small company trying to fight the big corporation's, and I applaud them for that. It's why I went with them, competition and rooting for the underdog. People will always complain that they're not getting premium features for free. Think about how much it costs to upload, maintain and manage 500,000 uploads each day! The server fees must be astronomical. Add people streaming on top of the uploads, and you've even bigger downloads!

As I said above, bad form for the older plans, it should have been given more notice, like saying now that it's changing in January. Give people time to look around and decide to leave or stay. But I understand the need to have more subscriptions, they need to pay to maintain, and they won't get that from sales alone.

They specifically sold their products on the premise of no subscription fee necessary to use their main features (Night Mode, Motion Activated Clips etc).

Now you need to pay for these options. It comes across as Bait and Switch tactics to me. Get loads of people to buy in because of your free service and then turn around and tell them in order to use 90% of your devices functionality you need to pay us.

adox

emmetkenny wrote: »

Emailed Amazon and I had a reply in 15 minutes. They are going to refund the full amount so no complaints there.

I was going with the Circle last time and changed to the Canary because of the bigger discount.

I'll hang on now until Black Friday and see what crops up.

What email address did you use? I bought at the same time and want to see if I can get a refund too. Didnt even know about the changes.

TitianGerm

adox wrote: »

What email address did you use? I bought at the same time and want to see if I can get a refund too. Didnt even know about the changes.

I used the app. Customer Service - Contact Us - Email Customer Service - My Order - Other Order Issues.

Just explained that lots of the features are no longer working and the item is no longer fit for use and asked for a credit on my account for a return.

adox

emmetkenny wrote: »

I used the app. Customer Service - Contact Us - Email Customer Service - My Order - Other Order Issues.

Just explained that lots of the features are no longer working and the item is no longer fit for use and asked for a credit on my account for a return.

thanks just mailed them. Fingers crossed.

Im disgusted with Canary. will look for a different option.

Thanks to the OP. i wasnt aware until I read this thread.

TitianGerm

adox wrote: »

thanks just mailed them. Fingers crossed.

Im disgusted with Canary. will look for a different option.

Thanks to the OP. i wasnt aware until I read this thread.

I didn't realise anything had changed until herself was saying that the dogs hadn't been moving for the last few nights (we had Night Mode on a Schedule so you would have a few recordings in the morning).

I didn't even get an email to notify me of the changes.

bk

Potential-Monke wrote: »

I read through their T&Cs, and it does state that the services can change at any time. That's how they're covered.

EU law doesn't work that way! Just because something is in the T&C's, doesn't necessarily make it "legal", contract law doesn't work that way. The laws of your country come first, you can't sign away your legal rights in a T&C's

I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect this goes against various consumer information laws, advertising laws and consumer rights laws. T&C's never invalidate such laws.

adox

emmetkenny wrote: »

Email them and say some of the features are no longer working and ask for a refund on account.

Are you sending yours back to Amazon?

Im still waiting to hear back from them. Not sure if I still have the original box.

TitianGerm

adox wrote: »

Are you sending yours back to Amazon?

Im still waiting to hear back from them. Not sure if I still have the original box.

Yup. Refund came through this morning and I have the label.

I'm a fecker for boxes, I keep them all. On top of the wardrobe I'm boxes for Hue Bulbs, Sensors, Echo Dots, Harmony, Canary. I've three TV boxes in the attic :pac:

Cabaal

emmetkenny wrote: »

I bought my Canary about 5 months ago from Amazon. I wonder could I return it now as it's no longer working as described? Probably not I'd guess.

You should be able to

TitianGerm

Cabaal wrote: »

You should be able to

They refunded me this morning.

adox

Ive got a reply back with a prepaid return label. Will be refunded upon return.

Will see when I get home if the box is under the stairs or not!

TitianGerm

adox wrote: »

Ive got a reply back with a prepaid return label. Will be refunded upon return.

Will see when I get home if the box is under the stairs or not!

Tell them there's no box if you can't find it. They might just deduct a small amount from the refund.

adox

emmetkenny wrote: »

Tell them there's no box if you can't find it. They might just deduct a small amount from the refund.

Yeah I dont think they even mentioned the box. Hopefully I still have it anyway.

Its times like these you sort of regret buying them discounted. Think I paid a little over £80 for the unit so thats what Ill get back.

Will certainly look at replacing it with something else.