Arlo Makes Live Customer Service A Luxury Option

from the basic-competency-is-extra dept

The never-ending quest for improved quarterly returns means that things that technically shouldn't be luxury options, inevitably wind up being precisely that. We've shown how a baseline expectation of privacy is increasingly treated as a luxury option by hardware makers and telecoms alike. The same thing also sometimes happens to customer service; at least when companies think they can get away with it.

"Smart home" and home security hardware vendor Arlo, for example, has announced a number of new, not particularly impressive subscription tiers for its internet-connected video cameras. The changes effectively involve forcing users to pay more money every month if they ever want to talk to a live customer service representative. From Stacey Higginbotham:

"This week, Arlo launched what I generously think of as its pay-for-customer-service enticement for its smart home camera products. As of Oct. 4, customers without a subscription who’ve had their devices for more than 90 days no longer get phone support. And after one year, they lose access to live chat support."

If you don't pay Arlo more money for actual customer service, you're relegated to cobbling together support solutions from the company's forums, an automated website chat bot, or elsewhere. Given the cost of Arlo products, the decision to make speaking to an actual human being a $3 to $15 monthly add on is fairly ludicrous:

"Arlo’s customer support framework now requires a $2.99 to $14.99 per month Arlo subscription, a free trial plan, or the device to be within 90 days of purchase for phone support. Then you’re downgraded to chat support for the remainder of the year.

After that, absent a plan, Arlo customers with problems will only have access to a virtual assistant or the public forums. That means no phone support and no chat. This feels pretty punitive for a product that can cost between $130 and $300 depending on the device."

Even U.S. telecom giants, the poster children for atrocious U.S. customer service, haven't meaningfully pursued making live customer support a premium option (though they have tinkered with innately providing worse support to folks with low credit scores). Arlo's choice comes amidst higher shipping costs and supply chain issues during COVID, but the decision to try and recover those higher costs by making basic competency a luxury tier will likely come back to bite it in an IOT space that's only getting more competitive.

Filed Under: customer support, home security, iot, subscription fees
Companies: arlo

Spectrum Customers Stuck With Thousands In Home Security Gear They Can't Use

from the walled-gardens dept

For the better part of the decade, ISPs like Comcast and Spectrum have been desperately trying to carve out a niche in the home security and automation space. But despite their best efforts those projects haven't gone particularly well, to the point where big ISPs try to hide how many subscribers have signed up for such service in earnings reports. Historically, users already feel they pay their cable TV and broadband provider too much money, and only a few folks feel it's worth paying them even more for home security and automation products they can find elsewhere, usually for less.

Customers received a good reminder last week of why it's not worth buying home security and automation services and products from their ISP. Charter Spectrum, the nation's second biggest cable provider, has announced it's shuttering its home security services as of February:

"At Spectrum, we continually evaluate our products to ensure we are bringing you superior, consistent and reliable service. We perform regular reviews of our services and as a result, effective February 5, 2020, we will no longer be providing or supporting Spectrum Home Security service."

The problem: customers spent thousands of dollars on much of this Spectrum-branded gear, and while the hardware they received supports smart home standards like Zigbee, they're built in such a way as to be locked to Charter's (soon to be nonexistent) systems, rendering them useless. Needless to say users aren't thrilled to learn they now own thousands of dollars in useless hardware, something that wouldn't have happened had they bought off the shelf gear:

"All these devices are Zigbee based, made by a major player in the Zigbee devices game. Under normal circumstances, you would be able to take all your stuff and move it over to your own home automation solution (Samsung SmartThings, Wink, Hubitat to name a few). But nope, not Spectrum’s devices. Early on they were firmware coded to prevent them from being seen and usable within the normal universe of Zigbee devices. With a couple of exceptions Spectrum’s Zigbee devices will only see the Spectrum Zigbee universe. So essentially after Feb. 5, 2020 your house full of Zigbee devices will be useless."

Spectrum users are quick to point out this could have all been avoided with a little elbow grease by Spectrum, but the company couldn't be bothered:

"The criminal part in this is that with literally a 10 minute fix and firmware to those devices BEFORE they shutter their service would open them to the universe of compatible Zigbee devices but you can take to the bank that Spectrum isn’t going to do it, otherwise they would have mentioned it with the announcement. All those hundreds of dollars (thousands in some cases) down the drain… how does that make you feel?"

The cable industry's relentless desire to keep you locked in their proprietary walled gardens are also on full display when it comes to their cable box monopoly, and it's one of countless reasons why these companies enjoy some of the lowest customer satisfaction ratings in America. And while Spectrum has struck a deal with Abode to give these customers a discount on new security systems, that's cold comfort for those who shelled out thousands of dollars for hardware they can no longer use.

Filed Under: home security, iot, ownership, support
Companies: spectrum

Home Security Company Says No One Linking To Its Website Is Allowed To Disparage It

from the lol-no dept

With a federal law in place forbidding this sort of stuff, and an internet full of documentation detailing just how badly things go for companies that institute these policies, why on earth would ADT Security add this clause to its Terms of Use?

For those of you who can't see the tweet, soon-to-be-former ADT customer scriptjunkie has been informed via dialog box ADT's Terms of Use have changed. ADT's Terms of Use contain a Streisand Precursor: if you link to ADT's site, you promise not to do several things, including:

Will not disparage ADT, ADT's products or services, or any of ADT's affiliates or their products or services

This isn't even legal in this day and age, but hiding it in a bunch of words users will likely never read is a great way to fly under the federal law radar. This, of course, only lasts until someone points it out on the internet and, while linking to ADT's site, points out the clause is stupid, the company is stupid for deploying it, and the company's lawyers are just as stupid for suggesting it/signing off on it.

To be fair, ADT's stupid non-disparagement clause isn't part of the update scriptjunkie received. The moronic "promise" it extracts from site linkers dates back to at least 2014. It predates the federal law banning these clauses, which makes its pre-2016 existence somewhat explicable. But that doesn't explain why it hasn't been removed to make the Terms of Use federal law-compliant.

Considering the amount of effort it would take (next to none) to remove this from the site's Terms of Use, its continued existence is perplexing, especially in light of ADT's repeated promise to remove the clause. At the time of this writing, more than 16 hours have passed since ADT promised to remove it and the clause still exists on the Terms of Use page. Even more perplexing is ADT's explanation/apology, which is actually neither.

We also value your honest opinion and have built our company around implementing our customers' feedback. The non-disparagement clause you are referencing only applies to linking to our website and is not a condition of service or using ADT.com.

While it's nice to know ADT isn't preventing people from disparaging the company without linking to its site, trying to prevent them from doing so while linking isn't any better. Review sites tend to provide links to company websites, making third-party reviews a potential violation of this clause.

But even if we take ADT's explanation at face value, we're still left with its questionable decision to insert this language anywhere in any explicit or implicit agreement with site visitors and/or customers. No business should ever take this indefensible position, especially not after it's been made statutorily explicit these agreements are considered invalid -- and illegal -- by the federal government.

Filed Under: home security, non-disparagement, reviews
Companies: adt