Plea to Amcrest for improving end-user communications

[GaryOkie]

As an FYI, here's a letter I sent to Amcrest Support last week. Currently, it seems that their support policy is each user needs to submit a support ticket and wait to find out why their app/doorbell doesn't connect rather than Amcrest issue a direct notice about known operational outages. My hope is that together we can have a louder voice to get this supposed policy changed.
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June 18, 2020
Hi Amcrest Support,

I am not in any need of support right now but had to get a few things off my chest. The email that I sent about a month ago was a plea for improved communications regarding SmartHome outages. Sadly it seems there has been no progress at all as this past week has been a nightmare for many users trying to get their AD110 reconnected. I am writing once again to urge Amcrest to get a process in place for SmartHome outage communication as quickly as possible.

I also want to know why there aren’t any firmware update RELEASE NOTES? We should know what is being fixed and what new features are being added. I just discovered by accident that the new firmware now supports capturing snapshots via the HTTP API. That’s no way to find out what’s improved or fixed.

Please review the attached email I received from another company that provides cloud server access to our home automation hubs. They had an outage today and sent out the attached email directly to each user. It was greatly appreciated as our home security depends on it. Our Amcrest SmartHome devices also offer a significant level of home security and should have the same level of attention and support. I hope your IT and communication teams could learn from this and just do better.

Dear Vera Customers,

Early this morning we pushed an update to our cloud server, but unfortunately, this update took longer than expected to deploy and has resulted in you being unable to access your systems or control your homes.

We understand the responsibility that comes with putting our systems in your homes and apologize for the inconvenience this has caused many of you. The system should be up and running shortly, though due to the number of users trying to reconnect, access may be delayed a bit further.

Please note: during the update, the system was returning an incorrect username or password error, but you do not need to update either of these. Once the system is back online your usual username and password will work as normal.

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate you being a loyal Vera customer.

Regards,

Mark Samuel
CEO, Ezlo Innovation

Just now received a reply from Amcrest Support which completely misses the point...

Jun 23, 2020, 8:43 AM CDT
Hi GaryOkie,

I apologize for the delays in response or getting this issue fixed.
Most of our agents are working remotely in this pandemic situation.
I was also not available last couple of days.
We provide response to customers at the same day. But now it getting delay due to high email volume.
We appreciate your patience and once more we apologize for the inconvenience.

Thank you & Have a great day

[GaryOkie]

Sigh. I give up trying to get Amcrest to acknowledge this very serious service outage through an official announcement - like we would expect from any competent security-related service provider. All I am hearing from 1st level support is that they are waiting on a response from the "higher team". No response yet provided.

This suggests to me that there could be a serious staffing problem with their "higher team" developers that maintain the firmware. This could very well be due to the pandemic particularly if they are not able to effectively work remotely. Even their lead site admin for this forum hasn't been heard from again since mid April and has been removed as an administrator.

I've also tried contacting the remaining active site admins, like @mromamcrest , but they are laying low and not answering on this forum, maybe under orders not to. It sure would have been good to get first-hand representation from Amcrest on this forum for critical service issues.

We have no idea what hands they have on deck, no idea what progress has been made in identifying the problem, nor any idea of the status of the firmware fix. The lack of Amcrest communications is just unacceptable. The local streaming capability of the AD110 is what shines, but its dependence on SmartHome is a disaster.

Jun 25, 2020, 4:57 PM CDT

Hi GaryOkie
We have notified the issue to our higher team and waiting for response from them.

Thank you & Have a great day

Jun 25, 2020, 11:18 PM CDT

Thanks Melissa,

It would be greatly appreciated if someone from Amcrest would participate on the support forum, particularly the SmartHome forum to directly address this issue. Posting an announcement of the service outage and some idea of when it will be back in service is greatly needed. I do NOT want to do another Factory RESET to reconnect, particularly when I don’t have any idea what is going on that is causing the AD110 to be offline.

Jun 26, 2020, 6:26 PM CDT

Hi GaryOkie,

We greatly apologize for the inconvenience caused.
Our higher team is working on this issue to find a permanent solution.

Thank you & Have a great day

[amcrest168]

also we would like to see change logs or release notes on firmware releases. there were two ad110 firmware released on two consecutive days july 1 and july 2 but what has changed between july 2 and july 1?

[GaryOkie]

Absolutely agree - you've heard plea for release notes before. I opened a support case to see if I could get further with Amcrest providing detailed change information. Ha. No such luck.

From: Mellisa Jones (Amcrest Smart Home)
Jul 2, 2020, 3:29 PM CDT
Hi

It only resolves current server issue.
That is permanent solution for the device.

We have not received a change log now.

Thank you & Have a great day


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Jul 2, 2020, 11:14 AM CDT
Hi Melissa,

Would you be so kind as to find out from the development team what was updated in the latest firmware on the AD110 please? A new firmware was released today, just one or 2 days after another was released. There should be some release notes published for each firmware update for users to review before updating their devices.

Please open this as a new case and please don’t close it until we have an answer on whether or not release notes can be provided.

Thanks!

[Revo2Maxx]

That info I am guessing they are saying it shows when you DL the file for update so that is where the change log is...It did have some data about Fixing the Offline issue on the last update I installed.. So the data you seek I guess is already there when updating

[GaryOkie]

yes, the x701 update stated it was to fix the offline server issue. What then was the x702 update the next day fixing? And what were all the changes and fixes to the major x509 update? Nothing at all was documented about that firmware release that I saw.

[Revo2Maxx]

I am sorry I don't know.. As I said I am guessing... I have passed the Thread along to Support. I am not sure to any of the Change logs I have not seen any done for long time.. Maybe it will text out some data in FW area in future Releases...