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Nest Cam with Floodlight - horrible Event Detection & inconsistent recording

ejnest
Community Member

We recently purchased a Nest Cam with Floodlight and installed over the weekend. We bought a Nest Doorbell previously and were very happy with the recording, notifications, etc. - so we decided to subscribe to Nest Aware for more features. The Nest cam with Floodlight is a much higher quality camera (and more expensive) so we expected a similar experience to our Doorbell, if not better. However, the Event detection on the camera is horrible and does not work as advertised. After installing, we let our dog outside and let him run around in front of the camera. No notifications, no event detected. I walked in front of the camera myself and expected to see a "Person seen" notification + event. Nothing. Later that night, we finally receive a notification "Motion detected" - we watch the 11 second recording and there is no motion whatsoever. Confused, we watch the clip again in the morning and now the clip is 5 minutes long and there are 3 more motion events, each 5 minutes long? And we only received 1 notification? And NONE of them contain any motion. Very disappointing experience for this camera. We contacted Support who helped us troubleshoot for 3 hours(!) and eventually suggested we just Factory Reset the device. As annoying as it was to reset the device, remove from app, re-add, etc. we really wanted the camera to work. But even after the reset, we still had the same issue. Our case has been escalated to Engineering and now we're waiting for a response, but after our experience so far we wouldn't recommend this product to anyone and have requested a refund from Google.

8 REPLIES 8

MplsCustomer
Bronze
Bronze

@ejnest

It sounds like you may have a defective camera. We've had a Google Nest Camera (Battery) for 15 months, plugged in with the optional power cable. It is basically the same camera as the floodlight camera, and in our experience it records events and sends notifications as well as our older Google Nest cameras and doorbells. That is, it is great during the day but detection of events is not as good at night (though, with our Nest Aware Plus subscription, everything gets recorded).

Brad
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi there, 

Sorry to hear you're experiencing this, as I can imagine it has been an inconvenience. I would love to look into this further for you. It definitely sounds like your camera may be experiencing some errors. Please fill out this form, and a higher tier of support will reach out to you for further assistance

Best regards, 
Brad

Brad
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi there, 

 

Just checking in to see if you have had the chance to fill out the support form I sent. Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns. We'll leave this thread open for a little longer for follow-up questions and concerns. 

 

Best regards, 

Brad

ejnest
Community Member

Hey Brad,

Thanks for following up. I already had a support case open for this issue but I went ahead and filled out the link you sent as well, just in case it would help. 

Support so far has been very unhelpful honestly. They asked for a bunch of diagnostic info (serial #, versions on every device and app, even a video recording of an event that should have been detected). And after all of that, they simply told me that they couldn't determine if it was a software or hardware issue - and to return the device. Not really what I expected, as I assumed they had much better observability on their side into these issues...

I asked for a refund of the device but all we got was a measly $25 credit, and they will probably close the case meanwhile the device is still not working as advertised and they have no way to tell us why. Oh well

Brad
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

@ejnest

 

I am sorry to hear that you feel you didn't have the best experience with support. I am afraid I wouldn't be able to offer any further assistance on this thread. The best option for you would be to share your feedback in the app, and continue to work with support if that is what you wish to do. Thank you for your patience.

 

Best regards,

Brad

Brad
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi there,
 

We'll leave this topic open for another 24 hours in case there are any follow-up questions or comments.

Best regards,
Brad

ejnest
Community Member

Just want to add before the thread is closed - the issue was never resolved and Support wasn't able to do anything to help. They gave us a $25 store credit and that was it. If you're experiencing a similar issue, raise it with Support and try to ask for a refund. 

Brad
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

@ejnest

 

Sorry to hear that you weren't able to reach a solution with support. We'll still be locking and closing this thread. If you need assistance with a different topic, please feel free to start a new conversation.

 

Best regards,

Brad