A Note About Pricing From the Founders at Wyze - 5/6/21

Wyze News
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A Note About Pricing From The Founders of Wyze

Hey Friends,

This is a turbulent time for the IoT industry. Due to world events, we are seeing huge cost increases on almost every material used to make smart products. The cost increases are mainly driven by silicon chips, but also include memory, plastics, metals, packaging, and more. We expect the cost of these key components to continue to rise over the next year.

We are not the only company facing this challenge, but we pride ourselves on setting radically low margins, so it has been especially hard on us.

As a result, prices on some Wyze products, including Wyze Cam v3, will increase starting on May 18th. We expect our prices to be volatile for the foreseeable future as we try to keep up with fluctuating costs in the post-pandemic world.

While we are making adjustments to price, we also wanted to include a positive change heavily requested from our communities. Going forward, shipping charges will be included with product prices on wyze.com and we will offer “free shipping.” This will make our prices easier to compare to our retail partners. It will also eliminate the situation where users feel surprised by shipping charges in checkout, which goes against our company values of transparency and treating our customers like friends.

Speaking of our company values, we have built this company on being friends with users and delivering too good to be true value with every purchase. Those things will NEVER change. We as a company have not been perfect, but we are confident that we have always honored our promise to deliver great products at the lowest possible price. That is who we are and who we will always be.

Thank you for your loyalty to Wyze and for helping us get through a tough stretch in history.

– Wyze Cofounders

Yun Zhang

Dave Crosby

Dongsheng Song

Frequently Asked Questions

Which products are increasing in price?

For sure Wyze Cam v3 and Wyze Video Doorbell though it’s likely other products will follow later on.

What are the new prices starting May 18?

Right now, Wyze Cam v3 + shipping is $29.99. The new price including shipping will be $32.99.
Wyze Video Doorbell + shipping is $44.98. The new price including shipping will be $54.98.

Will Special Cam Plus product pricing increase as well?

The Cam Plus subscription price is staying the same. However, the price of products purchased using the Cam Plus discount is increasing as well.

Will Wyze continue to offer shipping discounts for orders with items that can ship together?

We are currently working on a new model that will allow us to give a discount for purchases with multiple items but we aren’t quite ready to give details yet. Stay tuned!

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Thanks for addressing this!

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Thanks for letting us know!
I completely understand the reasons why this is done and I’m glad Wyze is transparent about it. Wyze is and will always be the best!

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You’re welcome, folks! :slight_smile:

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Could you elaborate on what this means for founder members?

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These changes will apply for everyone.

  1. The price of some products is going up. This may be something that has to happen again later depending on the material costs and availability but we’re going to make sure we give you the lowest prices we can.

  2. The shipping costs for our products are going to be moved into the product cost instead of being presented separately for an improved experience. We understand that the surprise at the shipping/handling/processing fees for us shipping products was unpleasant.

  3. People using the Cam Plus subscription discount on affected products will still have a discount but the price of the product with the discount is also raising instead of staying the same as it is now.

  4. We are working on a model that will allow us to give discounts when people purchase multiples of the same item but more information about that will come later.

Did that answer your question, @Punkgi? :slight_smile:

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At first you had me worried that V3’s were going to increase by like 50%-100%, but they only went up $3? That’s pretty reasonable considering the supply issues going around.

You said the prices could be “volatile” for the foreseeable future. Does this imply that if silicon chips, memory, plastics, metals, packaging, etc. start to stabilize that you could actually reduce the prices again? It’s rare to never to see a business actually do this, but I could see it if Wyze 's goal is to just keep the devices at a certain profit margin percentage.

I am assuming it would be very difficult to ever permanently reduce prices again. This is partially because inflation and CPI are so out of control lately (CPI hasn’t had more than a single negative % change in a month since 2015)…so that indicates it’s only possible to keep going up (well, the number has to go up, but in theory it kind of still costs the same based on how inflation and CPI work…though nobody’s wages are going up at the same rate, so I guess it is going up overall after all). Rather, I expect Wyze will instead use the law of anchoring to leave it at the higher price and offer more specials and incentives to give lower prices when they can afford to and psychologically make more sales, and not have people upset when it has to go back up again. This would make people happier without all the frustration of volatility increases. At least, from a business consulting standpoint that’s what I’d suggest be done until things are more back to normal and really stable.

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This is all speculative so I can’t really give strong answers on this one. But I do know that we’re committed to the lowest prices that we can do so I would not be surprised if we lowered prices later if the costs of materials go down and we don’t need that margin for other business costs.

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I completely understand the supply side situation and economic impact it is having upon Wyze. That said please explain where exactly are your increased costs in the Cam Plus arena? There’s no additional product to purchase raw materials for, no handling nor shipping. The storage is on the memory card in my camera. I essentially pay you a fixed price a month to be allowed to view video recorded by my camera on my SD card at my home. I fail to see your overhead costs increasing and to be honest without the inexpensive Cam Plus as it currently is your products and services are no longer economically viable for me either without you providing more juice for the squeeze. I am not going to go ahead and get the doorbell, the Pan or the additional v3’s and I have definitively decided against the monitoring services if you are going to be changing the agreement after the fact. If you are going to be moving the goalposts so to speak with poor mouthing emails how about you offer a buyout option for those of us that can add and subtract and know you are not a good option for us with the monthly reoccurring increase in Plus so we can"jailbreak" and get some worthwhile use for the money we have invested in your products and services and maybe you can retain some customers. Or go ahead and go the way of Beta Max or Zunes. Thanks for your time and I appreciate your timely answer

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Thanks for the updates and for letting us know in advance! I am happy to hear about the shipping charges and this will help stop some confusion and frustration when ordering. I am also happy about the multiple item discount since it will give a reward to people who buy more products from Wyze. Thanks!

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Not trying to justify Cam Plus price increase, but this is completely wrong.

Cam Plus isn’t using your SD card.

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Thanks for the information, I understand what you are saying and appreciate Wyze being forthcoming with this. I can’t say I have seen this from other companies.

Having the price include the shipping is great, no surprises when checking out… :slight_smile:

Appreciate the advanced notice

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I think you misread the FAQ. Cam plus pricing is NOT changing.

And cam plus is for the 14 day cloud storage, smaller cool down, and longer recordings. The SD card recording is completely separate and you don’t need cam plus to use it. I use continuous recording to SD card on 2 of my cameras and don’t subscribe to cam plus for those 2 as I don’t need it. The standard cloud recording and motion detection for cloud recording is sufficient for those 2.

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@Jasonclaynorman
As @towelkingdom stated, if you read the FAQ’s closely above, the subscription for Cam Plus remains unchanged. It is the price, for example, of a v3 will go up but Cam Plus members will still get a discount.

Also with Cam Plus you are paying to watch video that is stored on a server and being analyzed for people and vehicles etc. It does not pull the video from your SD card, you could remove the SD card and still watch Cam Plus videos.

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Mad respect for you guys. As someone said above, you didn’t double your prices, I think one went up $10! I have NEVER seen a company tell it’s customers that a price change is coming and give us over 10 days to order stuff BEFORE the change.

You guys obviously missed the class in business school where it taught you how to screw your customers for every dime they have.

Quality product, quality service, a product that does exactly what is advertised that it should do & more. Yep, you definitely missed a few courses in business school. But I’m cool with that :slight_smile: :star_struck:

Mad respect guys!

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Are the Cam Pan and other order products going to stay the same? Do you have a lot already made in the warehouse? I was thinking about getting the Monitoring service with additional devices, are those going up as well? I love your products and I will be a loyal customer. Love your vacuum!

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Understood. But I record full-time on the SD card and I had to get cam plus or it didn’t allow me to see the playback. I may have done it wrong but once I got Plus I was able to get the playback as a couple of weeks worth of motion, sound, package etc activations. But I just have begun to use my Wyze cams and haven’t had time to become proficient with their abilities. But I have a great feeling about the community as you have been responsive and direct without being rude in correcting me and informing me I have a better reason than the company or product to stick around. The fabled elusive Actual decent human being appears to have found a last hidden oasis online here in the Wyze community. We are all truly blessed and or lucky whichever you prefer. Hope neither us nor Wyze manages to cock this up.

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Screenshot_20210506-214431_Gmail
Screenshot_20210506-214431_Gmail1080Ă—2220 230 KB

Please correct me if I am wrong but does it not say an increase in the Plus monthly charge in the email I received?

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That was incorrect , the corrected version is in this post

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