Arlo updated and signed me up for trial that I would never sign up for since my arlos are EOL

[jandmmichels]

I woke up to an Arlo update and a tiny notice in the top corner of the app saying it was a trial period. I never signed up for Arlo's Smart because I live in the country and only need the 7 day cloud. And I really liked the old app better. Does anyone know what's going on here? They said 2 years ago that if you purchased based on the 7 day cloud promised at the time, my cams are 6-8 years old, that you didn't have to purchase Arlo Smart.

[DannyBearAgain]

There has been numerous posts previously reporting that arlo has forced customers across to the new feed version of the app. I believe the carrot is to force you into the subscription plan by placing you on a 30days trial plan that removes your access to the free 7days when the trial expires.

Good luck.

[Edinburgh_lad1]

Didn't they have a court case about removing that feature as part of EOL before - I remember reading about it in the press, but can't remember much? @StephenB will know the details as he's been around for some time.

[jguerdat]

The initial EOL announcement said that the free plan would go away but that got quickly reversed. If you have any legacy devices that fulfill the free plan requirements (5 cameras max) then the free plan exists for you.

As for the migration to the new INTERFACE (the app supports both the old one that uses Library to view recordings as well as the new one that uses Feed), that will eventually happen to everyone. It's taken way too much time to do but has also been useful to take that long to work out the wide variety of issues it introduced. Folks that never had the old UI don't seem to have the issues that migrated folks have so part of it is the user's mindset.

Finally, the trial subscription is just a marketing tool to try to get you to subscribe, which you don't have to do. After 30 days, it disappears and all should be as before as long as you don't start using premium features that require a subscription. You're not being forced into anything.

[StephenB]

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@Edinburgh_lad1 wrote:

Didn't they have a court case about removing that feature as part of EOL before - I remember reading about it in the press, but can't remember much? @StephenB will know the details as he's been around for some time.

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Whatever the motivation, they decided not to remove the 7-day cloud storage.  The camera is still EoL so no guarantees that all the features will continue to work.

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@jandmmichels wrote:

I woke up to an Arlo update and a tiny notice in the top corner of the app saying it was a trial period. I never signed up for Arlo's Smart because I live in the country and only need the 7 day cloud. And I really liked the old app better. Does anyone know what's going on here? 

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Lots of folks like the old interface better.  But Arlo is committed to the new one, and has been slowly migrating existing customers to "Feed" for the past two years.  At some point (my guess is by the end of this year) they will migrate everyone.  So there is no going back.  That said, they have said that they will add back custom modes, and maybe some other features in the old interface.

As far as the trial goes, they are just hoping you will subscribe.  When the trial ends, you will continue to have the free storage.  

[DJung78]

God, I hate Arlo!

I have 5 Arlo cameras setup.  

I purchased EUFY yesterday on Amazon.  Since the new new free trial started, none of my alerts and notifications started working.  As the other half a million users have already reported on various forums, they have experienced the exact same issue.  Now that the trial is ended, you are stuck with the useless camera system.  

Arlo, if you have not noticed yet, many retailers have started discounting your product, because nobody wants your product anymore and you have forced your buyers into a subscription plan.  

Arlo users - do all you can to share your experience with this useless product.

[BrookeN]

@DJung78 the cameras all still will work as expected. Please provide more information and we would be more than happy to help. 

[DJung78]

Good morning.  As the other hundreds of Arlo users have posted on Reddit and other forums, since the free trial started (and ended) none of our alerts are working.   Prior to the free trial and the forced update to the app, when motion was detected with one of my cameras I would get an alert on my iPad and my Android phone about 40 seconds later.  This alert would be the push notification (icon) and an alert (some form of a noise).

The push notification is almost useless unless you are staring at your device and see it.  The alert (noise, ring, sound) is the most important notification, and since the new app was forced on all of us, these alerts stopped working on both my iOS and Android devices.    

If you need more details feel free to reach out to me or the hundreds of other users that have complained about this issue.

[DJung78]

I have tried to force stop the application.  Cleared cache.  Removed the camera from the base station and then re-added.  

This new app update has basically made the Arlo camera nothing more than a camera with audio.  Without sound form of a sound, ring, or noise to indicate to the owner that the camera picked up on something… it is useless.

[shmihe]

I was forced on to the same trial, and I have an Arlo q which is legacy hardware that came with free rolling 7-day video recording. 

As soon as I saw that I was forced into a trial, I knew what to expect. 

Well the trial that I didn't sign up for ended yesterday, and I had only a couple recordings after that. 

Guess what? Now I'm not getting any video recording whatsoever. 

This is total BS, and a scam. Another attempt to brick perfectly working hardware and/or force legacy hardware customers into paying for something they do not need. 

Many of us bought this camera based on the free rolling 7-day video recording that it came with. 

Why should we have to toss out something that worked perfectly, until the app didn't want it to? 

Come on Arlo, you've been doing this periodically for the past 2 years. 

If there is a solution to get my hardware once again working and getting the free rolling 7-day video that it's supposed to have, then come at us with it!

[shmihe]

If you are telling me that my camera is still supposed to work, then how come it stopped immediately after the trial? 

I can only view live video, there are no recordings. 

I have an Arlo Q, so it is legacy hardware, but perfectly good working hardware. Until that stupid forced trial version happened. 

Can't say that I didn't see this coming, that as soon as it ended I wouldn't have any recording. 

I have gone through this in the past with other updates, and somehow they ended up getting fixed.

But I've spent more than a few hours each time trying to fix something that wasn't broken before. That is a a very poor business practice and BS for the customer to go through.

If there is a secret code or sequence of how to reset and resync this somehow, so that my camera records video again like it did yesterday, let us know ASAP! 

Totally pissed off, that I've probably gone through this like four times now (after Arlo app updates).

[BrookeN]

@shmihe do you only have the Arlo Q on the account? Try removing it from the account and then add it back on. 

[BrookeN]

@jandmmichels is everything working as expected with the 7 day storage?