Arlo Smart subscription turned off

[53Crusher]

I am likely one of the very first Arlo Ultra users. Pre-purchased the system as soon as they were released. It's been a rough year of being an unpaid beta tester for Arlo with many periods where the system simply didn't work. Today, I go to look through my videos for last night and there is NOTHING showing on the cloud anymore. It's all gone. Spent several hours trying to figure out what was wrong. Turns out my annual subscription must have expired. Without any warning, notice, e-mail  or smoke signal Arlo just let it expire and turned it all off.

Clearly, I can sign up for a new subscription, but my question is why didn't Arlo do ANYTHING to let me know about it? Additionally, it seems to me that every Arlo Ultra user should be entitled to some credit for time lost during the last year due to experimental firmware releases.

For all of you Ultra users who bought on the first day, you should check your subscription status if you don't see any recordings on your account.

[JamesC]

53Crusher,

When you originally purchased your Arlo Ultra kit, it included a free 1 year trial subscription for Arlo Smart Premier. It sounds like your subscription expired. Nearing it's expiration, you should have received a renewal e-mail letting you know the trial was nearing it's end. Check your email spam folder to make sure these e-mails aren't automatically being filtered by your provider.

JamesC

[mauijer]

I agree this has been a rough year for Ultra early adopters. My free 1yr trial ended today which is frustrating because now there are no video recordings at all. The cameras malfunctioned for most of my year and only recently did I see them start to perform better. I know there was a lot of back and forth on free cloud recordings and I thought the compromise was to keep 7 day recordings like our Arlo 2 had. But now that my subscription is over there is nothing. My push alerts contain no video clip and logging in shows empty history. Is this what the basic plan without a paid subscription looks like? I certainly hope not because cameras that can't show me why they went off is worthless.  Thank you for addressing James.

[JamesC]

mauijer,

Without a subscription plan, recordings are not saved to the cloud with Arlo Ultra. You will need an Arlo Smart subscription plan to view recordings in the cloud, you can find out more here: Arlo Smart Plans

You might also be interested in the recently released Direct Storage Access, for more information on this, take a look here: What is Direct Storage Access and how do I use it?

JamesC

[mauijer]

I have attempted to activate local storage without success. Under smarthub, "Record Locally" is turned on but below that the toggle switch for "Direct Storage Access" automatically returns to 'off' after being pressed. I will attempt under a different user and see if that changes anything. 

[53Crusher · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your reply @JamesC . I checked my spam folder and nothing. The domain arlo.com is stored as a safe sender in my client. I receive all alerts, low battery, low storage and even marketing e-mail offering discounts on new products. Sadly, nothing about my subscription expiring. I have renewed for a month as a year doesn't seem to be an option.

On a positive note, all my equipment is finally functioning as it should be.

[LandJS]

Even if you get a message don't trust it lol.  Mine said runs out on the 21st, figured I would sign up today, got up this morning and it had been shut off during the night telling me I need a subscription.  Good thing it wasn't my turn for a robbery or other event.