Hive View security camera customers left in the dark as some gear gives up the ghost Customers of Centrica-owned Hive are reporting problems with their cameras, with many complaining the devices have packed up, some after a few years of operation and others after mere days. The company's forums are filled with complaints from customers finding their cameras have unexpectedly headed towards the light (or …
5 or 10 years?
I think you're being a bit optimistic. I'm thinking three years is probably a very long service life for a lot of this tat.
"But why would you want support for your existing device when you could have a nice shiny new one with loads of extra features"*
*Most of the extra features could be applied to the old one with a firmware update, if only it worked.
I tried to buy a camera for viewing my front door. It was just for letting me see who was at the door making a delivery, when I was at home, in the garden out the back. Would be going on a closed circuit wifi or wired network. Went into my local electrical retailer named after an Indian dish as I happened to be passing. Gave the sales bloke my requirements, told him there obviously couldn't be any cloud element and I didn't really need recording. If he'd got nothing that fit the bill please would he tell me now.
He then proceeded to show me a Ring doorbell which when queried if they'd released an update to allow offline working admitted they hadn't. I then saw Nest, Hive and I think something else all of which needed an internet/cloud connection. When I said no to all of them he informed me that I was obviously going to need the internet or how could I view the camera when away from home? I asked if he'd listened to my requirements when I first spoke to him and he rather bizarrely said yes. I asked what use the camera would be if the cloud service went down or bust? He didn't have an answer to that. I told him I'd try elsewhere and got a Foscam on Amazon.
" how long the entire "cloud" charade will continue."
Until the cow is dried up and dead. Which may take a while yet, as there's still an entire flight of eager middle-managers with eyes agleam at the prospect of using "cloud" to leverage themselves into the E-suite. Once that group flames-out spectacularly, "cloud" will become background noise again. Shoot, we may even go back to calling it "hosted" instead of "cloud".
We are now waiting for the most reluctant old schoolers to migrate their data and comptational tasks to someone else's computers the cloud, but I hear the next disruption (which it actually is, in this particular case) is already round the corner. It is going to be marketed as edge computing™.
And no, it won't be back to owning your computers, I'm afraid. More like we'll be allowed to lease the hardware on similar terms as people are allowed to use Iphones and similar hardware for a period of time for an up front fee.
Oh, that stings. These constantly changing rules give me hives ... When I first got here, the buzz was that extracting such (j)apiary was not only normal, it was expected. Now you tell me to put a cap on it? Ah, well ... no need to brood in my cell waxing philosophical, not with mead to sample.
The other tap is a very dry '16 Gravenstein cyser. Suit yourself.
According to consumer protection law, the minimum warranty period is TWO years. Unless Centrica/Hive want a huge fine like wot Apple got in Italy for charging a fee for the second year, then I hope that was an error on the part of the author and not the supplier.
I was going to ask, don't you folks have a law that lets you get financial recourse if the product fails within 5~6 years of purchase?
If I were one of their customers & the device failed within the first 1~2 years, I'd send it back for a full refund. Why aren't the current victims doing the same?
Yes, we do. There is an unlimited 2 year warranty and then there is a thing called "reasonable lifetime" where you should be able to get a repair or refund based on a sliding scale. This based on defects which should have been apparent from the time of manufacture. It gets a bit complex when it's software/firmware which technically you don't own, only licence, and the supplier has provided updates in the meantime. The supplier also has a right to try to effect a repair in a reasonable time frame. Personally, I'd take/send it back to the retailer and specify my "reasonable time frame" and then demand a refund when it's not met.
This is why I prefer to buy from reputable bricks'n'morter shops when possible. They will much more likely just hand over a refund, ship it back to the supplier for their refund and let them worry about the cost of repair/scrapping it.
I tried to get my failed and dead Hive Indoor camera repaired or replaced im March 22 as it failed completely after 3 1/2 years. I sough this under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (“the Act”) which says goods must be:
• Fit for purpose
• Of satisfactory quality
• As described
My claim was that the camera should be of such a quality as not to completely fail after 3 1/2 years and this was rejected by Centrica. So I went through the Utilities Alternative Dispute Resolution process who found in favour of Centrica as the adjudicator said it was incumbent on me to prove, not the Centrica to disprove, that on the balance of probabilities, the Camera was not of satisfactory quality due to a defect that was present at the point of sale. How on earth one can do this beats me so yet again big business wins against the individual.
There are better and cheaper cameras on the market so dont bother with Hive
Where non-working products are the norm.
The latest example is their G4 Doorbell which is a complete lemon, just look at the number of users with the following problems on their forum:
* Reboots when visitors press the doorbell button
* Chimes 5-7 seconds AFTER the doorbell is pushed (so visitors have already left before you know they're there)
* Chimes randomly overnight (eg. at 2am-3am) when nobody is at the door
The product is a joke, as is the support. They're blaming it on cold weather even though there's ample evidence of the problems occurring in warmer weather that is within the supported temperature range.
https://community.ui.com/questions/39ccce81-863a-4d4a-af7e-f495291d1563#answer/152cb5ff-7d11-4b4a-a608-9c4b3e7d35a6
https://community.ui.com/questions/5-7-second-delay-on-mechanical-doorbell-chime-since-Protect-1-20-1-update/6679c53f-7487-4872-b388-93aa517ce7d0
I am a happy Hive user (it's currently controlling my heating, hot water and five smart plugs) but there is no way I would touch their cameras. They're stupidly expensive, don't integrate into the Hive ecosystem (you need a separate app) and even before this latest outrage were notoriously flakey.
I have never understood this mad rush to put everything in the cloud and buy the latest shite that will have more holes than a teabag. I suppose it is down to the arseholes who market the stuff, the fact that they are allowed to do so by brain dead goverments and what appears to be the general dumbing down of the UK population.
Why do people think that having their whole life connected to the internet is a good idea ? Even in a perfect world of secure software, stable operating systems, well protected servers and excellent security this does not seem to be a good idea.
Surely the whole nation can't be that dumb to think that it is sensible to wire up an insecure baby monitor and camera or heating / alarm controls to the web ? But there again, how many millions have a spyspeaker device in their house that listens to every single word on the offchance that they can use it to play a song without having to physically do anything.
Dumbing down indeed.
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