I just filled out a survey from Yarbo and one of the questions was about Yarbo launching a subscription service for “preferred” customers and if I would be interested in said service.
Does anyone know if this is real? If is it I need to return my unit ASAP as there should not be any kind of pay service for a product in this price range. Subscription services are for products that are nearly cost free and problematic.
Any thoughts or comments from the community on this?
They have always been clear that there will be some subscription type of services like Cellular. While it is currently included with the cost of the core for 2 years at 2GB free per month, (which on average is more than enough for casual use) some users might opt to run exclusively on cellular and need a more premium service offering there. You can opt to swap out the SIM card and go with your own SIM and provider plan, or you could just pay a modest rate to Yarbo. The estimated cost of their plan as of last year for the US was more than reasonable IMHO.
There may be other offerings like someone may want to be able to take full advantage of Smart Vision over cellular. This is currently disabled to limit data usage (as it consumes a lot). I could see this being a premium offering. As long as they don’t charge for standard non-cellular SmartVision, I’d totally be ok with this.
I suspect (totally my opinion) that what currently works today, will continue to work and any premium offerings would be enhancements that each user could decide for themselves if they really want/need it and if it’s worth the cost. I am sure that Yarbo has to pay third parties for these services (like the cellular plan) so it makes sense that they would offer these types of services as a premium offering to defray their operating costs.
Wyze did this with their cameras, keeping the same level of service I started with years ago “free” but adding cloud recording, longer event recording, and AI as different levels of “premium” services. So there is “value add” if you toss in a few bucks a month, else you just stay where you were for free. They also had a great deal for existing customers to add a zillion cameras to a higher tier plan at a very reduced rate. That’s all reasonable, I think.
In the end, these folks do sell items and make a little there, but they also have to keep the lights on for ongoing bugfixing and maintenance. By all of us chipping in, we keep the updated code coming, parts available, and enhancements and future models in the pipeline.
We understand how you feel. Regarding the Yarbo Care service mentioned in the survey, please rest assured that it will not affect any of the support or services you currently receive from our team. We remain committed to providing full support for all our users.
Yarbo Care is simply an optional offering for those who may be interested in additional services—such as on-site assistance, as referenced in the survey. This idea is still in the early stages, and we truly welcome your feedback.
We appreciate your understanding and will continue to support you every step of the way.
I don’t know if this is in response to a suggestion I submitted or more likely was already in discussion. Add on cloud based services are a good option for customers AND Yarbo. It can facilitate optional services like proactive system monitoring for timely maintenance suggestions, sensing issues before they become hard failures like maybe temps or motor currents that are increasing or spiking, other things along that line. It also adds an important revenue stream supporting Yarbo’s associated support and or software development teams. It’s a win win scenario if they choose to pursue it.
I don’t think maintenance reminders and proactive health monitoring should be a paid service. The unit should do that as part of buying one.
Paid services should be things like cellular, extended warranty, cloud backups of maps, etc.
The way the survey was worded was such that it sounded like a premium offering for warranty and functional issues.
If it was intended to be additional items over the standard offerings currently available, that I am ok with. Additional functions can cost more (I don’t need cellular, it won’t work in my area anyway - bad signal).
But, if we are talking about moving down the priority list if you don’t pay for a premium service, that will be VERY hard to swallow. I just had to wait 72 hours for my newly arrived Yarbo core to work at all. And it only got resolved because on Friday afternoon I setup a tech support call for 4:45AM on Monday (that was the first one available). And, if a premium service option happens for this then I have a suspicion that 72 hours for ‘non-paying’ customers will become the norm and not the exception.
I hope I am wrong because when the Yarbo works it does exactly what I want it to do. If it keeps working I am likely to buy more modules as they come out. But, if the customer service doesn’t improve (I can accept some growing pains) it will be hard to justify.
@Brian.Wheeler It’s a subjective thing and any “contract” offering would likely be a layered approach which definitely could have check boxes for all those things you mention. It’s a bit odd to suggest pay services as a customer, but I love the product and I want em to succeed, and why not offer some advice based on my decades of experience in scientific instrumentation customer service. I only speak from that experience in my career, on materials analysis equipment that for the most part was not user serviceable AND had major repercussions on productivity during any repairs/downtime. Likewise, in the summer and maybe even worse in the winter, some will have back-up options, some will end up with a hay field or knee deep drifts if the gadget goes down for a couple weeks or months waiting for parts that failed at a bad time. Getting a heads up that a motor or bearing or some other component may be headed towards failure offers at least a chance to order spares or whatever. I can’t imagine any company ever offering cloud monitored proactive device management as a free service, but hey, if they do, I’m just that much more a fan! Not saying I would even buy in to such a service, as I do have back-up options, but as an executive in global service for many years, I do know a little something about value added services. Up to Yarbo of course what they may be equipped to or willing to offer their customer base. Good discussion though… 
In fact, it raises another programming possibility as an alternative - if they could simply add a color coded background to the already monitored fields like temps, voltages, signals, and such - green is in normal range, yellow is in the margins, orange you better be taking notice, red failure is imminent. That could be a nice function as well…
I didn’t receive any survey (or I missed it) - maybe you could pin it as a highlighted link at the top of the forum? I’d like to see it.
I received the mentioned survey a while ago talking about extended warranty offerings AKA YarboCare. Perhaps you did as well. Sounds like it might be going out to new owners too.
Nope, searched my mail, never received. Maybe @Yarbo will pin it.
Wait, did I miss this somehow? The sim card is included with 2GB of service for the first two years or am I misunderstanding? If it is, how do I activate it?
Just toggle cellular on. It works out of the box. It picks the best of the 3 major providers and uses that one.
@brian.wheeler mine has been enabled since installation maybe a month ago, but it doesn’t seem to be doing anything?
It will only switch to cellular if it needs to. Zero data usage is normal. If you see data usage it means you probably have lost HaLow.
Thank you for the information, Bryan.
