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

TitianGerm

adox wrote: »

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.

I hope Amazon return them to Canary. Let the feckers see how bad their decision has been.

adox

emmetkenny wrote: »

I hope Amazon return them to Canary. Let the feckers see how bad their decision has been.

Yep, had a look at the most recent reviews on amazon and the first 3 or 4 pages are pretty much all 1 star reviews, all complainng about the same thing.

I wouldnt be surprised to see the decision send the company under.

Anyway its one of the reasons I really like buying from Amazon. On the odd occasion that there is an issue its so hassle free to get it sorted.

bk

Yes, even if I had a subscription for them and wasn't directly effected by this decision, I'd now be seriously worried if this company will survive this at all and if my investment in the devices would be lost.

They have completely lost the good will of their users. Their users are rebelling now and letting people know about this everywhere they can, posting one star reviews on multiple sites, etc.

Given the number of returns Amazon have to process, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they eventually pull their products from their site. Not worth the trouble.

This sort of thing can be fatal for a young company like this.

TitianGerm

bk wrote: »

Yes, even if I had a subscription for them and wasn't directly effected by this decision, I'd now be seriously worried if this company will survive this at all and if my investment in the devices would be lost.

They have completely lost the good will of their users. Their users are rebelling now and letting people know about this everywhere they can, posting one star reviews on multiple sites, etc.

Given the number of returns Amazon have to process, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they eventually pull their products from their site. Not worth the trouble.

This sort of thing can be fatal for a young company like this.

Whoever made the decision to not grandfather in legacy users must be regretting their decision now.

adox

Just home. No box to be found. (Although wife home in half an hour so she may find it somewhere!!)

Typical I’ve boxes for nearly everything but not that. Anyway I’ve sent customer service an email to let them know and that I’ll be sending it back in a plain box.

adox

So the wife arrived home, searched for 2 minutes and presented me with the pristine Canary box

Stoner

Got on to Amazon today, the text service. The asked for my number and said they'd call back soon.but didn't.

They knew about it though

wexfordman2

adox wrote: »

So the wife arrived home, searched for 2 minutes and presented me with the pristine Canary box

Aren't wives feckin great how they do that :-)


I was laughing to myself earlier when you said she might find it when she gets home, I'm the exact same way with herslef, I don't know how they do it.

TitianGerm

wexfordman2 wrote: »

Aren't wives feckin great how they do that :-)


I was laughing to myself earlier when you said she might find it when she gets home, I'm the exact same way with herslef, I don't know how they do it.

My girlfriend is the opposite... Puts stuff in random places and forgets where she puts it

wexfordman2

emmetkenny wrote: »

My girlfriend is the opposite... Puts stuff in random places and forgets where she puts it

That's all going to change when you marry her ;-)

TitianGerm

wexfordman2 wrote: »

That's all going to change when you marry her ;-)

Nope. It's been 10 years and she hasn't changed so I wouldn't hold any hope :pac:

Stoner

Amazon are taking mine back

Stoner

For the record I've purchased 4 on total. But the one from December is heading back

It's still a useful camera. And I have Arlo and ring cameras and it's the best resolution over wifi of them all.

All my other cameras are wired

So what's left for Free


Live viewing
The siren
The motion detection and alerts
Home and away status
Temperature, humidity and air quality meter
Recordings of the temp, humidity, quality in the cloud and graphed

I contacted two people I bought it as presents for. One is returning and one is keeping it.

adox

I’m looking at the Arlo Q as a replacement.
Still research8ng but that seems the best option for me at the moment.

Honestly, with the Canary, the room temperature and air quality features for me were totally inconsequential and felt gimmicky.

TitianGerm

adox wrote: »

I’m looking at the Arlo Q as a replacement.
Still research8ng but that seems the best option for me at the moment.

Honestly, with the Canary, the room temperature and air quality features for me were totally inconsequential and felt gimmicky.

I'm considering Arlo and Nest. Going to get a Nest Thermostat so I like the idea of them talking to each other.

adox

emmetkenny wrote: »

I'm considering Arlo and Nest. Going to get a Nest Thermostat so I like the idea of them talking to each other.

I’m favoring the Arlo Q at the moment because it’s cheaper than the Nest and offers much better options for their free cloud service.
A lot of what Arlo provides for free is €10 a month with Nest, hence my leaning towards it.

TitianGerm

adox wrote: »

I’m favoring the Arlo Q at the moment because it’s cheaper than the Nest and offers much better options for their free cloud service.
A lot of what Arlo provides for free is €10 a month with Nest, hence my leaning towards it.

Do you not need the Arlo base station?

I don't mind paying for a subscription when I know I have to pay up at the start, what I don't like is been sold a free service and then having to pay something down the line.

adox

emmetkenny wrote: »

Do you not need the Arlo base station?

I don't mind paying for a subscription when I know I have to pay up at the start, what I don't like is been sold a free service and then having to pay something down the line.

For the wireless Arlos you need a base station but the Arlo Q is a wired stand alone product.

https://www.arlo.com/en-us/products/arlo-q/Default.aspx

TitianGerm

adox wrote: »

For the wireless Arlos you need a base station but the Arlo Q is a wired stand alone product.

https://www.arlo.com/en-us/products/arlo-q/Default.aspx

Thanks for that.

Whatever I decide to go with I'm planning two (more likely three) internal cameras and then another two external ones. I'll be adding bit by bit.

I will also consider going with a smart alarm system and get rid of my Phonewatch alarm and monitoring.

Stoner

adox wrote:

Honestly, with the Canary, the room temperature and air quality features for me were totally inconsequential and felt gimmicky.

If they had IFTTT enabled then you could do something with it

bk

adox wrote: »

Honestly, with the Canary, the room temperature and air quality features for me were totally inconsequential and felt gimmicky.

I agree completely, this feature is a total gimmick.

Stoner wrote: »

If they had IFTTT enabled then you could do something with it

That is part of the problem. I've been following them for the past two years on their community forums and they have been very slow to deliver new features like other companies do.

They promised Apple Homekit support from the start, never delivered, two years later now.

No integration with IFTTT, Alexa, GHome, etc. despite customers begging for it over and over again.

It came with two ways mic from the start, but it too them 1.5 years to actually activate it and when they did, only available to customers who paid for subscription.

And now this, not a positive history IMO.

emmetkenny wrote: »

I don't mind paying for a subscription when I know I have to pay up at the start, what I don't like is been sold a free service and then having to pay something down the line.

That is the biggest problem with this for me. I don't mind so much if I knew up front.

At £160, Canary is an expensive camera. But I was willing to pay due to no contract. Now all it has is live streaming, which is no better then cameras you can buy for £30 on Amazon.

bk

Wow, while I might have lost all faith in Canary, Amazon have been amazing.

Despite me having the Canary for almost two years now, just one email and they were straight back saying that they will refund it, no arguments.

Only thing is I have to pay to post it back to Portlaoise, but I think that is pretty fair given how long I have it.

Now I just have to wait for the Prime sales to pick up another Logitech Circle.

TitianGerm

bk wrote: »

Wow, while I might have lost all faith in Canary, Amazon have been amazing.

Despite me having the Canary for almost two years now, just one email and they were straight back saying that they will refund it, no arguments.

Only thing is I have to pay to post it back to Portlaoise, but I think that is pretty fair given how long I have it.

Now I just have to wait for the Prime sales to pick up another Logitech Circle.

I can't fault Amazon at all. Excellent service and I always fill out their surveys to tell them that.

Stoner

bk wrote:

I agree completely, this feature is a total gimmick.

It's not a gimmick at all. It's a temperature data logger. Valuable to some. Shows how well your room holds the heat in

As you say with IFTTT this would be great another stat to bring the heating on automatically.

Or on the air quality, open a vent/ turn on a fan or the boiler off.

But they haven't bothered to do it.

bk

Stoner wrote: »

It's not a gimmick at all. It's a temperature data logger. Valuable to some. Shows how well your room holds the heat in

As you say with IFTTT this would be great another stat to bring the heating on automatically.

Or on the air quality, open a vent/ turn on a fan or the boiler off.

But they haven't bothered to do it.

I find the air quality measurement to be a total gimmick, I haven't been able to figure out any rhyme or reason to what it is actually measuring! And that seems to be the consensus in the community.

Temperature does work, but almost useless locked on the device with no IFTTT, API or export possible. Not particularly useful if you have a smart thermostat.

Really they haven't bothered to do much at all IMO!

Stoner

bk wrote:

I find the air quality measurement to be a total gimmick, I haven't been able to figure out any rhyme or reason to what it is actually measuring! And that seems to be the consensus in the community.

Try the air quality meter in your bedroom with the window closed it moves into poor quality, open the window and it returns to good.

This is exactly the signal that is used in industry to open window motors, consensus of a community aside.

But I think we agree in isolation it's not much use. But with IFTTT it's a genuine carbon monoxide detector imo, certainly it gives me the expected results.

There has to be a strategic reason for no IFTTT.

adox

Dropped mine into the post office today so on its way to Port Laois.

bk

Stoner wrote: »

Try the air quality meter in your bedroom with the window closed it moves into poor quality, open the window and it returns to good.

Ah right, mine seemingly seemed to do the opposite! Maybe it is just a bad sensor in mine or maybe the fact it was an early unit. Later ones have slightly newer harder, so maybe they updated that too.

Stoner wrote: »

There has to be a strategic reason for no IFTTT.

I just got the feeling that they lacked the developer resources. It seemed to take them ages to get the most basic functionality out. I'm thinking small company, little money.

Third_Echelon

I'm US based and they grandfathered my subscription no problem after I complained. That was October last year (12 months ago).

They said that in April 2017 that it would go from $4.99 to $9.99, but they never did increase it. Still paying $4.99 per month for full features.

They do seem to be slow at bringing out features, but after doing a lot of research at the time I bought it, I felt it was the best option.

The recent cloud issues did impact me though. Unfortunately my apartment was burgled right in the middle of the issues. I got the notification around 30 minutes late and only got 1 minute of video out of a 3 minute robbery. It was enough to show what was happening, but I still would have liked the full 3 minutes.

I work in IT, so I understand that issues like this happen sometimes. It's more about the response afterwards and what they do to rectify things that matters in terms of goodwill going forward. I'm willing to give them a chance.

I am thinking about getting the Canary flex to improve security (just installed the Ring Video doorbell 2 as well), but I will give it a couple of months I think to see how Canary bounce back from this.

I do like them as a company and their hardware product is very good. The main reason that I did buy it in the first place was that the device itself blending in quite well (looks like an air freshener or something) and the monthly fee was a decent price.

After being burgled, I don't care what price they charge. You can't put a price on safety. I'd happily pay the $10 per month (or $15 for multiple devices).

Time will tell, but I'll update on their response here.

bk

Third_Echelon, in fairness to you, you are a much more patient person then me! I'd be hoping mad if that happened to me.

I completely agree with you that the actual hardware is very good and agree that one of the major selling points of it is that it doesn't really look like a camera or stand out. It is perfect for using a family space to not freak out visitors. My other IP Camera, logitech circle looks 100% like a camera.

However if I was you, I'd be very cautious about investing more in this company. Personally I think the company is in serious trouble and might not exist in a few months and thus anything you invest in it might be lost.

The biggest gripe is simply how they threat their customers and how they have responded to complaints from the community. It really feels like they are losing customers as a result.

The other big problem I think they face is that they are basically a startup with basically just one product (flex, etc. are just variants on the same idea), while the market is seeing lots of new, much bigger and more diverse companies entering the same market, totally out gunning them. They are now competing with Google/Nest, Netgear/Arlo, Logitech/Circle, TP-Link Kasa Cams, etc. These companies are offering products just as good or even better, with far more diverse eco-systems and are far more likely to continue to be around for many years to come, then a small startup.

Their really isn't anything particularly special about Canary versus these companies and I think their original plan was to get bought by another company or IPO, but that is all starting to fall apart now as they haven't kept up fast enough and introduced new diverse products fast enough to keep up with all the new competition coming into the market from heavy weight companies in similar markets.

To be honest I'm really glad that Amazon has agreed to take mine back and that I won't have to deal with the uncertainty any more.

BTW You should also check out Netatmo Welcome. They have a camera that doesn't stand out too much either, similar to Canary and it supports recording video to SD Card, Dropbox or FTP.

Their really are plenty of other better options out their now IMO.