A scathing review and ALL of it is valid! There's no real fix for him at Customer Care, there's only explaining why it will not work.
@Marc Shenker - This thread really needs to be pushed upstream in your command chain. My tone seems to be directed at you personally, but what follows is directed at Vera Ltd. not (just) you. As you may have seen from my posts, I'm a long time user of Vera and even I have been "guilty" of explaining away issues. But all of @jamieboy05 issues are 100% valid and most are LONGSTANDING issues, well overdue for a fix.
1.) System alerts on the dashboard. - People have complained about the inability to clear these since they were first implemented in UI6. Forum members have figured out how to zero the log file and implemented LUUP to do it, but a {Clear} button that works should have been in place long ago if not outright removing the banner.
2.) Energy reporting/monitoring. - Ergy has be a massive pain point and a problem since UI5 or maybe even earlier. That PoS plugin should have been completely removed from Vera when you launched UI6, but it's still bundled by default in UI7 and it's still causing confusion and issues. It's not at all unreasonable for people to expect Ergy to work and expect it to NOT break Vera by simply enabling it and exploring its existence. It's not unreasonable for them to find some documentation on it either.
3. Wonky weather. - Meh. But, Vera failing to remember her location? That needs fixing! And it should not be so hard/unintuitive for people to manually enter their Lat/Lon. The "fancy" hidey bits javascript interface is not intuitive and it just increases the slowness of an already slow interface. Dump that rubbish.
4. Limited compatible devices. - There are a few Z-Wave devices that need to be incorporated - device files and functionality- into Vera. Some users have been begging for them to be updated for a year. There's zero excuse for Fibaro sensors or others to still not work with Vera. And, launching Vera Plus with Zigbee compatibility as a selling feature with only three or some such compatible Zigbee devices takes some marketing balls. I know that there was a lot of demand for the Plus, but people should have been warned up front that ZigBee didn't support any devices. There's still time to add a banner with cautionary warnings that the functionality is pending to the Vera Plus product page and avoid further future ill will and angry customers.
5. App integration. - I'm not sure if the user is referring to Vera plugins. Naturally, these are beyond Vera's control. But, if he is referring to Vera smartphone apps, then he's got another valid point. The Native Vera smartphone apps are atrocious! Ooh, it's got geofencing. But it only "works" with one phone and it mostly doesn't work worth a hoot. Vera could have bought one of the existing third party apps and had a better offering. Furthermore, unless Vera Ltd. is going to RADICALLY improve the smartphone app, buying out one of the third parties might still be a good idea.
6. Bluetooth serves no function. - The front of the Vera Plus box proudly and prominently advertises ZigBee, Bluetooth and WiFi functionality. Bluetooth is completely unusable at this time. Vera Ltd. didn't even offer an option to use it for some sort of Home/Away presence against a smartphone. It literally is unusable. ZigBee is only slightly better. The WiFi implementation is barely usable, still lacking configuration capability for the 5GHz radio, and no client mode configuration option.
It's a sad state of affairs. Hearing the constant complaints since the launch of Vera Plus has got to be demoralizing for the Vera Ltd. staff and it cannot be good for business either. But, so many of the complaints are long standing and valid. I'm not talking about the countless; 'I wish it did this' or 'I mistakenly thought it did that'. I'm talking about stuff advertised on the box that never worked. Vera Plus literally does NOT do what it says on the tin!
In my opinion, Vera Ltd. has enjoyed a market leading position in the past, certainly in terms of Mios. But recent releases from large scale manufactures and retailers quickly, almost instantly, eclipsed Vera's market. Fortunately for Vera, most have been miss starts, so far. Vera Ltd, cannot afford to squander what little lead it may currently enjoy.
Piling on poor quality will establish a very negative connotation for Vera in the market place. Known issues need to be fixed. This is much more important to Vera's future than releasing a security and monitoring option that will be even more fraught with issues and complaints. Development resources - good ones - need to be focused on the current product. Development on future product needs to be deprioritized, at least temporarily.
Ignore your customers at your peril.
You have my permission, indeed my encouragement, to delete this post. But, show this thread to upper management. "Your house is on fire" and it seems that you've mistakenly chosen to use Z-Wave smoke detectors.
Edit: I forgot to rant about the lack of a manual. People can't RTFM if there is no FM.
I also forgot to address the inability to change device icons. People have been asking for that since Vera's inception. I presume that Vera Ltd. has made a conscious decision to never implement such a feature.
