Posted 5th Jun 2020
The free Kasa Care Subscription is unfortunately coming to an end.
It was great while it lasted but it's going to be £2.99 per camera or £9.99 for up to 10 camera's per month. 😳
Details here!
It was great while it lasted but it's going to be £2.99 per camera or £9.99 for up to 10 camera's per month. 😳
Details here!
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sorted by2 years free seems to have gone out of the window
I believe that it will now be a standard 30 days free of Premium (£9.99 package) on the first time the camera is set up and activated, and then after you will have to choose between the two packages if you continue to have cloud storage after this.
Im hoping that there may be a free level of say, two hours total recording time or 12hrs to check the footage like has been reported in the US.
If not i will be changing all my cameras as i suspect many others will.
Im also looking into into when we purchased them, the t&cs state there will always be a free cloud service even when they eventually bring in the paid subs. If this is true then we might have some recourse as i purchased them based on this fact.
Everyone gets 30days free of the premium plan which, as these plans are now out of beta testing and live, is why we’ve all received emails saying that our plans end in 30days.
What i take from this is that after this 30days, our plans will revert to the free 2 days of cloud storage for whatever is remaining of the two years from when you activated the camera.
For example, i purchased one camera 11 months ago so expect i will have 12 month left of the free plan once the next 30days is over. (2yrs - 11mnths - 30days free premium = 12months left)
Two other cameras i purchased in Nov 2019. I expect these to have 17months roughly left of the free plan.
If after the two years you don’t upgrade. They basically become live cameras only with activation alerts where you would have to connect immediately and record to your phone any suspicious activity. There would be no storage at all of any video unless it was stored manually by the user.
I will wait until this current premium deal is over at the beginning of July and then see what it reverts to and then come back and update.
I didn’t know that, but sounds like it could be a decent solution for me. I only use them inside for monitoring the kids rooms so would be good to keep it on my own network instead of the cloud.
I was getting the same but that's not what my issue was, I knew at some point they would start to charge for the premium 30 day cloud service, I was led to believe I could just simply revert to the free 2 day cloud service for the life of the product. At no point before purchase was a 2 year limit for the free service disclosed. My issue is, you either pay, or it becomes an expense webcam that any Chinese no brand camera could achieve the same functionality for £20. I know I still had over a year of the free service left, but it woukd much harder to return after 2 years of use vs 11 months. That's why I've bit the bullet now and I'm sending them back.
They are flat out denying that 2 years free was ever offered.
The boxes of my products (like the one above, plus an indoor box too that says the same thing but in a slightly different way), and the screenshot I have from TP-Link support say otherwise.
We will see what happens.
If they don't budge, its back to Amazon under the 3 year warranty.
Scumbags. They lost a lot of respect from me over this. We all know they offered 2 years then shanked it when everyone bought one.
Tapo records to cards in the cameras though and has no cloud storage. Although it can be accessed from anywhere for free, really you are just accessing the memory card on your network.
I think you are correct though regarding making Kasa premium, but they are also two different designs for different uses. I wouldn’t want a memory card in an external camera that someone could just pull out one day and come back and break in the next.
That's why I bought mine. 3 cameras. Always understood the premium 30 day service would end, but these were always advertised as having a product lifetime free 2 day video service. It's downright dirty of them to renege on the 2 day promise. Can they really get away with this? The fair thing would be to keep the two days to those people who bought the cameras when this was being advertised as a major selling point, and put new people on the paid plan...as long as the 2 day claim is now removed from selling pages. If this is how they behave, I won't be buying any more TP Link products.
I think mine had stickers on the box saying it so i will check in loft if i still have the boxes.
My Premium Trial ends tomorrow but i only purchased the camera last year as stated previously so tomorrow i will update with what my account shows after the trial ends.
I thinking it will either change to show the remaining of the two year free plan (as TP link states) or becomes live view only with no storage.
Exciting times lol.
On another note. My 30 day Premium trial ended today....
So i looked into the plans that this camera is now on and it shows this in the settings.....
So i have triggered this camera this morning and it has recorded the entire period that movement was detected with 10secs added on at the start and end and alerts etc worked as normal.
I have left the video in the activity history tab and will report back when it is auto deleted. (edited)
I've got the same "spot plan" from today.
Therefore if we want to keep any video for an event, it must be downloaded off of kasa prior to the 24hr expiry one would have thought.
At least I'm pretty sure I am!
Confirmed: I can access recordings from Thursday, but not Wednesday! (edited)
So I contacted TP-Link via their forums at the start of October. Wanted it to be public.
Got a standard reply from the forum moderator. But was then ignored. I asked again on the forum 2 weeks later.
Eventually, I received an email saying this kind of support should be done privately vie email. Was passed around a bit until they dropped the above mentioned LIE...2 days free was never, ever offered. They challenged me to prove this.
Obviously a blatant lie, and I had the evidence to prove it. They said 'send the evidence' - so I sent them pictures of the product boxes, and images from websites, including TP-Link support clearly stating 2 days free.
I then received an email from a higher up at TP Link. He said he was taking control. He said he would sort and respond in 48 hours. Over 2 weeks have passed. No response. No response to further emails either.
In effect, it appears they are now blanking me, despite everything offered and over 2 months of discussion.
TL:DR I won't be buying any of their stuff again because they are liars and support is a joke.
Funnily enough in this month's Which? magazine they say a " subscription to store online video for more than two days."
Says the below online still
tp-link.com/us/…62/
If they have had a change of heart, they haven't informed me yet.
But my cameras do now state the above too. Let's hope.
Dear Customer,
Many thanks for your kind feedback, and we really wish that we could accommodate you, sadly we are not able to go against the KASA Care policies every customer agreed to when subscribing to the KASA Care plans.
Firstly of all, the KASA Care, free cloud service was not advertised as a life-time service by TP-Link.
Secondly, we have the right to modify the services provided under the Free Services Package according to the policy expressly stated in the Kasa Care Service Agreement.
To check more details about the Kasa Care Service Agreement, please refer to:
kasasmart.com/1/legal/us/kasacare-service-agreement?lang=en
All the Kasa cameras will be applied with) a 2-year limitation for the free plan since the release of the new Kasa Care on March 23, 2020, and this 2-year limitation starts from the day your camera is activated and bound to a TP-Link Cloud. At the end of the free plan, you will need to subscribe to one of the paid plans to continue using cloud storage. To get more information about the new Kasa Care service, please refer to the FAQ below:
tp-link.com/uk/support/faq/2120/
Thanks again for your feedback, your understanding would be much appreciated.
Best Regards! (edited)
"upon checking it here, the thing is that once the free plan expire, the one that will stop is the storage. so meaning that you can able to see all the history of the camera recording for the daily records, but it will not be stored to the storage since that theres no storage anymore"
"thank you for the patience, upon checking it here I see, that once that the camera reach the 1Gb it will start removing and repalacing the clips"
During the chat, I was directed to the US FAQs and pointed out the information on there about what's included in the free plan isn't on the UK FAQs so they're going to look into adding it.
Definitely not what we signed up for here, it was advertised as 2 days free after the trial ended. Will also be digging out receipts to see what we can do about the miss-selling.
TL:DR free plan means 24 hours/max 1gb local storage only, not 2 days as originally advertised, FAQs to be updated. (edited)
You cant store locally on the cameras though. They have no storage capability. They are purely cloud cameras. The Tapo ones will store to a card but thats not what we have all purchased.
In the US they have the two day option as the only free plan, we dont seem to be getting that here. Just the two paid plans and the free plan being live view only after a notification, no storage.
I too have dug out the receipts and will be trawling the waybackwhen machine to see if i can find a page where it states there will be a free plan available in the uk with storage.
I have found both the chat, email support and the twitter team beyond useless!!
You only get the free plan for two years from initial setup, meaning Ive got about 11 months left and then i will be left with having live view only cameras with no cloud storage at all or paying for a plan. Which as already discussed was not the original contract promise at purchase.
Tried WayBackMachine, but nothing.
Hopefully someone has a screenshot.
Best I've got is screenshots of TP Link replies to customers, stating it is free for 2 days on the free plan. This is from 2018 or so.
Will be doing this myself. Cameras are now bascially bricks. Used to rate TP Link as well before this... Never again!
Return has been authorised and I've ordered some Imou Looc cameras from amazon, they also come with a free indoor camera, so thats 2 external cameras with pir and spot lights, 1 internal camera, x2 128gb sd cards for £150, I'll see if there any good (edited)
On checking order to see what I thought I was buying- i just realised I had a 6 month free trial instead of 30 days- but no mention on order or boxes. If they had finished it early I would have had no evidence, yes, a lesson to snapshot any special deals from now on... (edited)
Sold all of mine on eBay, moved on and vowed never to touch the company again.
Yep. I was appalled at them denying it. Its bad enough to change the terms, but to lie about it as well...