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Wednesday, September 30th, 2020 9:44 PM

Additional Inventory Offering - Cameras

Throwing this out to the SS team. I pose for consideration: Why not permit existing customers to "swap out" a defective camera for a refurbished one at a reduced cost ($25?) and a returned core back to you? You make money on selling the refurb. You have the knowledge to repair the defective unit, to make money on that one once it too is resold. And requiring a core in return would discourage someone from trying to just get cheap units. I'm sorry, but spending $99 to replace a camera every time one dies is not cost effective from a customer standpoint when they seem to die so quickly.

244 Messages

4 years ago

How often are your cameras dying?  I'm only about 18 months into mine but none of them have died yet. One is mounted outside too.  

They also have a 3 year warranty, which is about 2 years and 9 months longer than most consumer electronics.  Outside of that I think it's asking a bit much to provide steeply-discounted replacements.  We do see sales for $50 sometimes for new cameras.  Haven't seen one in a while, but we are approaching holiday season.

9 Messages

So far, I've had (3) die out of (7) so almost 50% failure rate in a bit over a year. When they work they work good. But when they die, they die hard and no amount of resetting fixes them. My suspicion is the get software damaged which the end user is unable to fix. thus why I asked about discounted "refurbished" units. They don't need to be brand new. Just functional. Buying for $99 then dying so quickly and only option is another full price replacement isn't very consumer friendly IMO. SS could offset scams by requiring a core to be sent back in. That core also has value from being full price purchased at one point as well.

Captain

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6K Messages

4 years ago

@oagermann why would you want to pay anything for a product covered under warranty? I get the fact you have a high failure rate, but something else is going on here. I can tell you the original cameras when they were released did have some fatal firmware issues and the spring on the privacy guard would break. After that both issues were addressed. I had 3 simplicams from the first batch and 1 was toast due to the firmware issue and another had a spring break. Once replaced, they were fine for the past two years.  You may want to look at which cameras failed (all originals or replacements). If all originals, I would contact SS and just get the remaining ones swapped out and save everyone (especially you) more aggravation..

9 Messages

Understood Captain and thank you for taking time out to reply back. My intent wasn't to create any aggravation for anyone. Just to get my system functioning as expected and my property secured.

Captain

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6K Messages

4 years ago

@oagermann my apologies to you. I just wanted to offer suggestions on why they may be failing if the were in the earlier productions runs. Of course, what you do it entirely up to you.
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