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Canary Now Charging for Previously Free Security Cam Features Due to 'Significant' Cloud Expenses
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You might have a point. The fact that they didn't jump in right away to reverse course points to a short-term strategy of preserving cash and raising income at the expense of long-term reputation and building its user base. Funny thing is that for a while there on Tuesday, Canary customer support reps were suggesting that users leave the units in Away Mode. Even if the system is only saving 10-second previews, can you imagine the additional load had everyone followed this suggestion?
As I posted earlier on the Canary Community Forum, I've thrown in the towel. I purchased my Canary All in One from Bed Bath and Beyond just over a year ago, and I'm glad I did. They have one of the best return policies out there, and they took the unit back and issued a full refund, no questions asked.
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The only thing you can do is to watch live (although you need the 2.2.0 firmware to do this in Home Mode) or set it to save 10-second snippets when an alert is triggered. Of course, since the first five seconds is before the alert trigger, you only get five seconds of useful video.
I agree local is cheaper but having owned a Dropcam (now Nest) with their online DVR, I felt a bit more secure that if someone were to break into my house, the footage would be stored at an off site location. The recording was essentially live whereas getting offsite backup for your NVR is an additional cost per month and you're limited how often you can upload. Currently my NVR saves blocks of 30 minutes meaning if the local copy is lost, there could be up to a 30 minute gap between what was uploaded offsite and what was not.
Having said that, I no longer use the dropcam as it cost $10 a month and i was able to get a local NVR solution by purchasing a camera for $90 and using my already configured NAS.
Anyone know of any recourse I have on this issue. I purchased mine on 11/11/16 from a Best Buy using a chase sapphire reserve card. Tried calling but member benefits don’t cover this far out. I might be past the point on disputed charges as well. I’m not going to even bother trying with Best Buy. Am I pretty much left with a glorified paperweight that really only shows live video if I don’t want to pay?
I agree. They should have left the existing offering in place and added a higher tier with more features to get people to move to those higher tiers, which would also help offset the cost of providing the free service.
There's a danger in going with any new company and their offering. Look at how many IoT companies have gone out of business, leaving their users with useless devices. It's sadly the price you pay for supporting a new offering from a brand new company.
The moral is that if the offer is too good to be true or substantially better than what everyone else is offering (who else offers all the free cloud storage for your camera you like), then you should be very cautious buying into it and know it may well fail or change.
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I'm sure the Terms Of Service clearly state that they can modify the offering at any time. Every user would have agreed to these terms, even if they didn't bother to read them. Tough crap for users but lesson learned on going with things too good to be true.
How do I get 2.2.0 firmware? My devices only show 2.0, so all my cameras now show in private mode if either my wife or I are at home. How can I check in on things like I used to.
I like to step in here to defend Canary a bit....
First my understanding for the negative reviews. I'm fully aware that people get upset that a company that once advertised with "free of charge" is now charging monthly subscriptions. All tough you can still watch 'free of charge' the limitations are so big that in order to make it worth spending money on this indoor camera requires a monthly subscription to get a decent functional that makes sense.
It's not the first time that the folks at Canary created this kind of controversy. I'm one of these people that supported Canary on indiegogo from the start. But, despite they stated that everything was for free, buyers soon discovered that 24 hours of free recording wasn't sufficient and that a monthly subscription would make the camera record for, if I'm not mistaken, two weeks. I even found two weeks insufficient. When on holiday you don't want to "watch" the camera, in case you missed notifications which often happens, just to be sure everything is 'ok' for the next two weeks.
None the less I decided to go with a subscription plan.
Later on Canary made is a bit more expensive which was the second time they disappointed me a a subscriber. But, all tough I didn't had an option there they did expand the recording time from two weeks to 1 month. And that, at least for me, was sufficient enough to feel at ease when going abroad, knowing that when on the road for weeks Canary would record everything out of the ordinary within a decent timeframe.
You would state that this "skipping of free downloads" option would count as a third time the company disappoint it's users but I find this a bit to negative since nothing much changes for it's subscribers. The thing where this all goes wrong tough is the fact that Canary has put to much, and to long, focus on this "free of charge" advertising method thing so people got this feeling, quite rightfully, of being mislead. I fully agree with the critics here.
But putting that aside, the Canary products all together are still a decent product. For example, for $150,- a year you get one full month of cloud recording time for up to three (3) Canary devices. Compare this to the Nest camera's where you should pay a whopping $600,- a year (!!) to connect three (3) Nest cams.
Now some people will argue that you should buy IP camera's instead with an onboard memory card that can record everything free of charge, but the whole thing about security camera's is that when someone enters your house you want to be sure that the recordings are being put somewhere safe. When someone demolish the camera or simply decide to take it along you don't want to loose your recording. When stored in the cloud you know for sure that until the moment the camera was recording that these recording are locked up safely.
Conclusion
So to sum it all up, even tough Canary did disappointed potentially buyers and even it's own "fanbase", the product itself is still very solid. Even despite it doesn't have an onboard 4K camera so you can zoom in without loosing quality, the camera itself is very good. The image quality, and in night time, is maybe even the best out there when compared among other cloud based "smart" security camera's. Next to that, you CAN (someone stated you couldn't) draw in an area which the camera should ignore once it detects movement in that area.
Canary might not be the "smartest" cam out there but it's sure is one of the cheapest, both in buying the product itself, and in the field of cloud recording. It also comes along with temperature, humidity, and air monitor functionalities.
I decided to opt for two more devices for more security, simply because for cloud storage they belong among the cheapest companies out there and still deliver a decent quality.
First my understanding for the negative reviews. I'm fully aware that people get upset that a company that once advertised with "free of charge" is now charging monthly subscriptions. All tough you can still watch 'free of charge' the limitations are so big that in order to make it worth spending money on this indoor camera requires a monthly subscription to get a decent functional that makes sense.
It's not the first time that the folks at Canary created this kind of controversy. I'm one of these people that supported Canary on indiegogo from the start. But, despite they stated that everything was for free, buyers soon discovered that 24 hours of free recording wasn't sufficient and that a monthly subscription would make the camera record for, if I'm not mistaken, two weeks. I even found two weeks insufficient. When on holiday you don't want to "watch" the camera, in case you missed notifications which often happens, just to be sure everything is 'ok' for the next two weeks.
None the less I decided to go with a subscription plan.
Later on Canary made is a bit more expensive which was the second time they disappointed me a a subscriber. But, all tough I didn't had an option there they did expand the recording time from two weeks to 1 month. And that, at least for me, was sufficient enough to feel at ease when going abroad, knowing that when on the road for weeks Canary would record everything out of the ordinary within a decent timeframe.
You would state that this "skipping of free downloads" option would count as a third time the company disappoint it's users but I find this a bit to negative since nothing much changes for it's subscribers. The thing where this all goes wrong tough is the fact that Canary has put to much, and to long, focus on this "free of charge" advertising method thing so people got this feeling, quite rightfully, of being mislead. I fully agree with the critics here.
But putting that aside, the Canary products all together are still a decent product. For example, for $150,- a year you get one full month of cloud recording time for up to three (3) Canary devices. Compare this to the Nest camera's where you should pay a whopping $600,- a year (!!) to connect three (3) Nest cams.
Now some people will argue that you should buy IP camera's instead with an onboard memory card that can record everything free of charge, but the whole thing about security camera's is that when someone enters your house you want to be sure that the recordings are being put somewhere safe. When someone demolish the camera or simply decide to take it along you don't want to loose your recording. When stored in the cloud you know for sure that until the moment the camera was recording that these recording are locked up safely.
Conclusion
So to sum it all up, even tough Canary did disappointed potentially buyers and even it's own "fanbase", the product itself is still very solid. Even despite it doesn't have an onboard 4K camera so you can zoom in without loosing quality, the camera itself is very good. The image quality, and in night time, is maybe even the best out there when compared among other cloud based "smart" security camera's. Next to that, you CAN (someone stated you couldn't) draw in an area which the camera should ignore once it detects movement in that area.
Canary might not be the "smartest" cam out there but it's sure is one of the cheapest, both in buying the product itself, and in the field of cloud recording. It also comes along with temperature, humidity, and air monitor functionalities.
I decided to opt for two more devices for more security, simply because for cloud storage they belong among the cheapest companies out there and still deliver a decent quality.
While what you write here is probably true it all boils down to "trust". "Trust" that was lost by the reckless decision of Canary to take away functionality from existing customers and demand more money from them to get it back. Why should a customer now sign up for a subscription with or even buy more devices from a company of which we don't know if it won't act reckless and against the interest of their consumers in the future again?
Canary is pushing out the updates to the All in One devices over a one week period (as I recall). The new "Watch Live" feature will also require app version 2.9.0 or later.
Fair point, but that also comes down on trust of the customer. I mean, why should Canary "rip off" their customers once again? The mistake this company made was to advertise that everything would be for "free" and it would only cost a subscription for advanced features. A bit naive, especially since streaming thousands of video's cost money. And Fully understand that when customers buying a product just to discover it isn't really for free they feel a bit screwed....
But, even despite these obvious failures done by Canary on the PR section the product itself is really good. It's very stable and the live streaming is quite competitive with other cloud based security camera's.In fact, I dare to state it's one of the best out there and no, I'm not working for Canary. But most important, Canary is way way cheaper then it's closed competitive as for quality: Nest cams. I mean 600 a year for 3 cams with Nest compared with 150 for Canary with three devices. Surely that should matter?
How do you pay only 150 for three Canary cams per year? Last time I looked they take 99 per year and cam with their annual plan. That sums up to 297 per year.
I'll take a look at the new cam from Logitech. They have a plan for only 3.49 per device and year.
[doublepost=1508185354][/doublepost]I was scammed too. Here's my post on the topic Canary Scams Consumers, Disabling Devices Without Subscriptions
Home security camera company Canary has updated the features included in its free and paid subscription packages over the past few days, removing multiple camera abilities that were once free to all users and placing them behind the company's $9.99/month paywall. Subscriptions increase to $14.99/month for 2-3 cameras, and an additional $4.99/month for each added device.
Many Canary customers have emailed and Tweeted us over the past few days pointing out the changes, and now Canary has provided a statement to The Verge regarding its motivations.
The Canary Flex and Canary cameras
Under the terms of the new "Free Service," Canary users can no longer use Night Mode if they aren't paying, meaning they can't set their camera to record clips when motion is detected in the nighttime while they're home. Canary Free Service members can no longer record videos or receive motion alerts in Home Mode, nor can they record a full clip from when motion is detected to when the motion ends. Instead, for Free Service members the Canary Cam automatically cuts off the clip ten seconds after the first motion is seen. Canary calls these "digestible video previews."
Canary Free Service members also can't download and share videos from the iOS app, but can bookmark an unlimited amount of video previews to their timeline. All of these are features that were previously free, and now require users to become a paid "Canary Member." As MacRumors readers have pointed out on Twitter, this means that even if you bought a Canary device months ago under the impression of not needing a paid subscription for basic features, you will now have to pay the company to keep on using the most useful abilities of the security cameras, or attempt to return or sell them.
Some basic features of the cams remain intact for Free Service members, like watching a feed live while in Home Mode without needing to switch to a different "Away" mode. Canary has updated the timeline as well, so that multiple cameras in one home have 24 hours of history for each individual device, instead of those 24 hours being divided up across devices.
According to Canary's FAQ page, the membership update comes with a change in its cloud service implementation, and the prior Free Service tier "will no longer be available." Understandably, the frustrations of many users center around Canary's last-minute announcement of the changes (September 28), which came less than one week ahead of the official implementation (October 3).
Canary co-founder and chief design officer Jon Troutman issued the following statement on the situation to The Verge: Canary's stance appears to consistently state that too many recorded videos were traveling through the Canary platform "unwatched," leading to a slowdown of the service for some users, as well as "costing Canary a significant amount in cloud expenses." As such, the company has adjusted the Free Service tier by paring down to ten second video previews, removing Night Mode, and preventing users from downloading and sharing videos within the Canary app.
Amid all of the turmoil over the new subscription plans, there's also still no word from Canary about when HomeKit support will launch with the Canary Plus. Canary first announced the HomeKit-enabled camera in June 2016 for a release sometime that fall.
Article Link: Canary Now Charging for Previously Free Security Cam Features Due to 'Significant' Cloud Expenses
I'm absolutely raging at what Canary have done. I contacted my retailer in the UK 'John Lewis PLC' and even though the product was about 16 months old, as it had a two year shop guarantee, they have refunded me, deeming it no longer fit for purpose.
At this point the class action result might be merely to force them to buy back cameras at retail price from anyone that bought them with those services listed on the box at X price which is now not the price. But getting back that $199 plus tax is better than nothing.