Arlo deliberately sabotages their software and maybe hardware, in attempts to force new purch...

[BrickInFL]

Arlo deliberately sabotages their software and maybe hardware, in attempts to force new purchases

FACT SUMMARY: Arlo deliberately sabotages their software and most likely also their firmware to force Customers to buy upgrades

Contributing Fact 1: over the last four years, my Arlo Geofencing performed as it was expected and supposed to

Contributing Fact 2: over the last four years the activity zones on my Arlo cameras performed as they were expected and supposed to

Contributing Fact 3: Arlo FORCED an upgrade in March 2025 that instantly broke my Arlo Geofencing and my Arlo camera activities zones

Contributing Fact 4: Arlo customer and tech-support have failed to resolve this despite three open tickets from me

Contributing Fact 5: the brand new Blink system that I purchased and installed worked out of the box in terms of Geofencing and camera activity zones, proving it’s not my phone or its settings (not that I had to prove it)

Just because it didn’t happen to everyone, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen to random customers. 'Your' system might be working just fine after the upgrade, but that does not excuse nor explain what happened to my system, and I'm willing to bet it's impacted a multitude of systems.

Facts are facts. The above is indisputable and in a court of law, there’s a very simple test: what would a reasonable mind conclude?

Arlo is a corrupt organization and they and their products should be avoided. Do not forget that several years ago they try to force customers to buy new cameras because Arlo was going to drop accessibility to and support for them, and reversed it AFTER public and legal outcry.

Arlo got sneaky and more disreputable after the above and recently moved forward with it anyway, just on a quieter and smaller scale as made obvious with the above facts.

[MichaelT90]

From my experience the oldest hardware I have would still work if they didn't "upgrade" the app to be unusable. 

Newer hardware doesn't seem to last a year even, and the app is still trash

Support can't help you because they are as clueless as the dev team, it's not intentional sabotage on supports' part, they just don't have any training. They have the articles on the website and that's it. 

The dev team? I'm not entirely sure there is a team anymore, maybe just 1 newbie left...

Whoever is in charge of these decisions to destroy the support, and Dev teams, and product development, and subscriptions needs to get in the bin. 

Those in charge have destroyed the company and the only thing they understand is money, so vote with your feet and find another system... It's hard but cutting your losses is the best thing

[ShayneS]

Thank you for the feedback. Can you provide more detail regarding  the symptoms you are experiencing so I can try and assist.

[BrickInFL]

lol - so where I appreciate the offer to help, please tell me what in my post needs more explanation?

My Fact 3 should be your focus. I know I wrote it, but I think it's pretty clear as to what's not working. 

[MichaelT90]

The app... The latest iteration of your app is hot garbage. 

Since the upgrade it's easier to tell you what does still work... Live viewing, sometimes...

Yet your company have the cheek to gaslight us and increase prices which I was told by your support was to fund a home screen widget I don't want. 

The issues many are having are clear, all over Reddit and this forum and the play store reviews... Yet your staff continue to refuse to acknowledge the issues.

[ShayneS]

@BrickInFL Lets start with 3 - Arive/Leave. Can you elaborate on the term "broke"? Are you not having mode changes, is it adjusting modes for any of your hand held devices? Are you receiving delayed mode switching?

Can you provide your Arrive/Leave schedule?

Note: The team is working on a simile experience to custom modes. You can see the announcement below.

"The development team is working hard to deliver a similar custom modes experience that legacy users have come to enjoy while maintaining all the new improvements and features included in the latest version of the Arlo Secure App. We will keep the community up to date as we approach the release of this highly anticipated feature."

Regarding 3 - Activity zones, what is broken? Are you missing all your motion alerts, still receiving notifications outside of zones, activity zones not working over AC power, Activity zones not working on battery power only? 

Note: If the device is moved, zoomed or rotated the zones will no longer be valid.

[ShayneS]

@MichaelT90

Can you define the symptoms that you are experiencing with the new redesign so I can help?

[BrickInFL]

I really loathe being repetitious/redundant. But I'll play this once. Keep in mind that EVERYTHING worked before the app update and I changed NOTHING. Let's use a Q/A (or statement) format.

Q: "Arrive/Leave. Can you elaborate on the term 'broke'?"
A: Geofencing - when the ONLY specified device leaves/arrives within the radius, the system activates/deactivates. Plain and simple. It worked, the update was forced, there are no longer any more automatic mode changes. I can manually change them.

Q: "Are you not having mode changes, is it adjusting modes for any of your hand held devices? Are you receiving delayed mode switching?"
A: See above.

Q: "Can you provide your Arrive/Leave schedule?"
A: Irrelevant; never said there were any.

Q: "Activity zones, what is broken? Are you missing all your motion alerts, still receiving notifications outside of zones, activity zones not working over AC power, Activity zones not working on battery power only?"
A: Battery powered cameras. Motion is no longer detected and I will be clear: it used to work - for YEARS!

Statement: "If the device is moved, zoomed or rotated the zones will no longer be valid."
Response: What? Totally untrue. Whenever the batteries were changed the devices were moved and rotated and obviously without power. But as soon as they powered back-up, things were as they should be.

Statements like that really bring into question the knowledge and expertise of the person writing such nonsense.

[MichaelT90]

I have exactly the same issues, forgetting the UI is trash, and saving settings changes gets regularly reverted after a few days by (I assume) the dev team rolling things back. 

The route cause of all of the issues is the fact it used to process everything like geofencing and routines on your device, now it's all processed on their servers and synced back down... For every... Single... Update.... Wildly inefficient, but allows the company to brick the devices when you stop paying a subscription because nothing is done locally. 

The activity zones aren't even managed locally anymore, so your cameras send all footage to their servers (everything! Regardless of geofencing or schedules) then their servers decide whether you need to be alerted. I know this because I've traced the traffic going back and forth from these cameras... They can't fix the issues because they've caused them as part of the new design. 

[ShayneS]

@BrickInFL

Do you only have one mobile device that is participating in Geofencing? Do you happen to see any duplicate devices listed when setting up the feature?

For the motion detection, can you do a motion test and trigger a motion in any of these cameras and see if the motion detection icon turns amber?  When doing this, make sure your in the Arm Away.

[StephenB]

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@BrickInFL wrote:

Q: "Can you provide your Arrive/Leave schedule?"
A: Irrelevant; never said there were any.

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But there do need to be arrive / leave automations set up if you are using the new "Feed" interface.  Can you post screenshots of those automation? (Blur out the maps!).

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@BrickInFL wrote:

Statement: "If the device is moved, zoomed or rotated the zones will no longer be valid."
Response: What? Totally untrue. Whenever the batteries were changed the devices were moved and rotated and obviously without power. But as soon as they powered back-up, things were as they should be.

---

I believe the poster was saying that the zones won't be aligned to the the same spots in the field of view, unless the camera is aimed exactly the same way when you put it back.  The app usually will detect this, and alert you that you need to adjust the zones.  So not "totally untrue".

Perhaps more on point, if the cameras are not detecting motion at all, then it would be useful to check all the settings:

• looking at the motion sensitivity (which might have changed when the system was migrated to "Feed")
• removing/recreating the activity zones
• making sure the cameras are armed
• seeing if you can make a manual recording while livestreaming.

[BrickInFL]

Only one device is active and the geofencing does not work. Not even after the update this week (Apr 12). So if the cameras aren't arming, the motion detection is irrelevant. 

[BrickInFL]

lol.

So, precision is critical. There is no schedule as that indicates a day and/or time, making it irrelevant. 

As for automation based on geofencing which is the crux of this whole debacle, it does not work (tested again just now). Not home, not away - it's broken.

And I bought and installed a Blink system. Effortless, perfect out of the box. With Alexa and IFTTT, geofencing is a snap and y'all need to check Reddit - Arlo has been and is getting SLAMMED. Seems I'm not the only one who Arlo broke.

[MichaelT90]

Geofencing and schedules have been broken since they forced me onto the new app last June... 

They don't seem to intend to fix it. I understand others have had it broken for longer...

The only solution seems to be to move to another provider because Arlo don't care...

That said, hunt down the bot and AI generated positive reviews and replies to comments they're buying, they're always a good laugh!!