Arlo|Smart Home Security|Wireless HD Security Cameras

Sharing cameras is broken in many ways

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BigBrother
Apprentice
Apprentice

Sharing cameras is broken in many ways
1. New app install has broken camera access sharing. I have installed the new app on all devices with all people in my family who all have their own subscriptions to Arlo for different addresses that use Arlo. There is no more camera sharing, it's broken. We have deleted the people who had access and added them again. Does NOT work. This is really really bad. Camera sharing is the single most important feature that I use every day to protect my family and property. 

2. When granting access to a camera to a person, that person gets an email that has one option only
"Create  Account". Well, what if you already have an account? This process is seriously messed up and needs to be fixed. If you already have an account and someone has granted access to a camera, make this easy. Right now it's a messy ball of confusion. You sign into your account as if you are creating an account and then you are prompted to get a subscription. I already have subscription. Please think about your users and what they actually go through when using the Arlo accounts. You have many new services and subscription types. It's getting very confusing as to what is happening. It really looks like these systems are not being tested on real people until they are released and then some of it gets fixed and some  of it does not. 


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Pissedoffme
Aspirant
Aspirant

This company has screwed up royally.  I have 42 cameras and an Arlo Secure plan for Cloud storage and smart features for "Unlimited Cameras" and have been quite happy and have been a customer for a very long time.  I just bought their new security system and when I started to "Add New Device" process to configure it they "updated" my app and it is now TOTALLY different and not intuitive nor what I want and need.  There is no way to arm and disarm individual cameras anymore - like front porch, garage, pool, bedroom, boat, etc. It's either all armed or all disarmed. They do have a new "Locations" feature, and I figured this was the obvious way to group the areas you want so that you can arm and disarm zones separately as I've done for a long time - but you can't move cameras from one location to another because EACH LOCATION REQUIRES A SEPARATE MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION!  I went through a useless chat session, and a useless 1.5 hour phone conversation asking how can I get back to the way things used to work that I loved or how can the new app do what I want it to do without requiring me to pay separately for each "Location" - only to be put on hold for 5-10 minutes multiple times and then them taking my number to call me back. I am very disappointed. They should not introduce a "new product" that happy customers buy but when you try to use it your old products break in such an obvious way and not give you any option to revert or for it to work properly other than saying now you just click through 3 levels of menus and back again and then 3 more levels and back to turn on/off every particular camera when it used to all be on one screen, or you have the option to just pay us more money to use our new "Locations" feature to group things into areas that make sense to you - ridiculous!

StephenB
Guru Guru
Guru

@Pissedoffme wrote:

They do have a new "Locations" feature, and I figured this was the obvious way to group the areas you want so that you can arm and disarm zones separately as I've done for a long time - but you can't move cameras from one location to another because EACH LOCATION REQUIRES A SEPARATE MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION!  


True.  I think the feature is intended to handle different properties, not arbitrary grouping of cameras.

 

Arlo's terms of service for Secure/Secure Plus always said one subscription per location, though that provision wan't enforced.

 


@Pissedoffme wrote:

There is no way to arm and disarm individual cameras anymore - like front porch, garage, pool, bedroom, boat, etc. It's either all armed or all disarmed. \


This is limiting - you can edit the three built-in modes (Armed Home, Armed Away, Standby) to get three combinations.  You can still manually turn cameras on and off, though not as conveniently as setting up a custom mode. 

 

I suspect there are other use cases they overlooked - hopefully folks will post what they can no longer do, so Arlo can address the issues.