Arlo Cloud Subscription Plans Availability on Puerto Rico

[Mvelez]

After purchasing, setting up 10 of these wire-free cameras and trying to purchase a suscription for your cloud service, Netgear support indicated me that the suscription service is not available for Puerto Rico (a US Territory) and there's no future plans for that.

I know that the cameras have a basic cloud suscription of 7 days but that is not enough for the intended use.

If your service is not available in all countries you should at least indicate that in your product packaging.

Now I have to remove them and take them back to the store.

[Gekkosan]

Truly incomprehensible. Doesn't make any sense no matter how you look at it.

Now that I've had the cameras for a couple of weeks, I can definitely see that it makes an enormous difference having the paid service or not.  Without the service, we cannot set up sensitivity zones or optimize the movement detection for humans. So my cameras are constantly being turned on, and uploading videos, by the movement of plants  around the perimeter caused by the wind. 
This means I get hundreds of notifications, and my camera's battery lasts far less than it should if it would only record when someone passes, instead of every time the palm tree moves. 

It's a lose-lose situation for everyone involved, and the sheer lack of business-sense of it all is just mind-boggling. 

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@Mvelez wrote:

After purchasing, setting up 10 of these wire-free cameras and trying to purchase a suscription for your cloud service, Netgear support indicated me that the suscription service is not available for Puerto Rico (a US Territory) and there's no future plans for that.

I know that the cameras have a basic cloud suscription of 7 days but that is not enough for the intended use.

If your service is not available in all countries you should at least indicate that in your product packaging.

Now I have to remove them and take them back to the store.

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[Georjuz]

Adding to the Discussion. I have a 5 camera Arlo pro 2 system and this is my feedback regarding this topic: 1) I notice too late that the Arlo Smart service is not available in Puerto Rico. Because this is not said in the package when you buy them this is false advertisement. 2) Now that you don’t have Arlo Smart (pay service) to get the human detection which is free in most of the cheaper brands camera options... You will have a ridiculous amount of notification of trees moving. Too much for the so "called best truly wireless system". 3) Because I have none of the above you would think that maybe if you decrease the sensitivity of the camera the obnoxious notifications will stop... think twice!! The camera movement sensitivity feature is pretty much useless. 4) Ok... well you would think ok at least I can make an Activity zone to mitigate the notifications; ehhhhh nope, because you need to have the charge directly to the electricity in order to activate this feature. Pretty interesting, looking at the fact that you pay a ridiculous amount of money to get a "truly wireless experience". Now with more than 500 notifications daily, how you differentiate a real thread? This is completely unacceptable and we should make something about it legally speaking. I’m about the make a BBQ party to invite some friend while I burn your extremely overprice garbage system. We say here “Lo barato sale caro” which means buy cheap and will end up paying more but truly this is not that case. Sorry if I sound very rude but my house was robbed and this is kind of frustrating. If you really sit with your engineer you will see that what I'm saying it's the truth

[Gekkosan]

I don't think it's so much of an engineering problem.  The cameras are very good, and the engineering is solid. 

It's the miopic, stupid marketing that makes zero sense.  

I have never before come across a company that plain refuses to accept the money that customers are more than willing to pay in order to get the same service advertised for everyone else. 

Pure 100% senseless discrimination.

[Alex2022]

Residents of Puerto Rico want to know when they will provide us with full service. Since I buy arlo pro 3 but does not let me use the clouds to record because in this country do not give such service.. Here are the Cameras have sold out very well but the service is halfway. With arlo pro 3 we can only record and watch using USB but we can not use the cloud service. Here in Puerto Rico many companies are selling the cameras. Sams, Costco, walmart, best buy should take us into consideration. Thanks

[Jwelch]

what are the countries where the subscription is available?? Its pretty deceiving that one of the main features ( being able to record ) is not available. Itturns the investment pretty useless. Can you pls indicate what countries ara available ? what if I subscribe thru a VPN ? is there a workaround ?I bought 10 cameras and it is a waste of money if service is not available.

[Gekkosan]

@Jwelch They have a list available somewhere. The continental US, for sure. In any event, at this point in time I'd just recommend to any new and potential buyers to just return the things and get their money back, or avoid buying them altogether, if possible. 

I have rarely been so disappointed with a product ever before in my life.  
As many have pointed out in other posts, the reaction time for motion detection is abysmally long, so by the time someone you get video, chances are that whoever was passing by is gone. This also renders the "speakerphone" feature nearly useless, because the lag time is just too great.
The batteries are crappy and hard to charge; and support is virtually useless.  One of my cameras simply can't use night-vision, but it was impossible to get support to recognize it.

 And to top it all off, the company simply refuses to offer the Arlo Smart service even though we're all willing to pay for it. Being able to use the service might almost make the investment worth it, in spite of all the severe shortcomings. Without it, it's just a set of poorly executed hardware that sometimes records useful video, but most of the time just lets you know that "something" passed by, but you'll never know what it was. Pathetic.

[StephenB]

@Jwelch  wrote:

Can you pls indicate what countries ara available ? what if I subscribe thru a VPN ?

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The country list is here: https://kb.arlo.com/88/What-are-the-available-Arlo-subscription-plans-and-how-much-cloud-recording-i...

Some folks here have apparently been able to subscribe using a VPN.  That's not something I've ever tried or needed.

FWIW, you can't get a Ring subscription in Puerto Rico either.  So perhaps there's a legal constraint here?

[Alex2022]

Puerto Rico is American territory. using a vpn you would have to pay additional

[Alex2022]

They are complicated Arlo pro 2 lets you record 7 days for free in Puerto Rico but Pro 3 does not let you record anything because it says that there is no subscription in Puerto Rico which is an American territory

[Alex2022]

completely disappointing and if the case is that it doesn't work in Puerto Rico why the hell do they sell them here these big companies like Costco