Ezlo”s fear marketing misleading

Vera Controllers, Services & Devices General Vera Discussions
1

I received this:

7 DAYS LEFT · AUTOMATIONS END AUGUST 1

In 7 days, every routine you’ve built stops running.

Seven days left. When the countdown ends onAugust 1, 2026, the automations you’ve spent years perfecting — sunrise wake‑up, motion‑triggered lights, presence‑based scenes — all go silent.
Time left to keep your Vera service

WHAT STOPS HAPPENING ON ITS OWN

✕ Time‑of‑day and sunset/sunrise triggers

✕ Motion, door, and temperature‑based actions

✕ Any scene you trigger from your phone or voice
Keep my routines running →

About a minute to activate. Plans from $2.50/month.

Ezlo Innovation | 200 Broadacres Drive 2nd Floor, Bloomfield, New Jersey 07003 | ezlo.com

© 2008–2026 Ezlo Innovation. All rights reserved. | Unsubscribe

_________________

Above is NOT true and clear fear-marketing.

Relevant laws are FTC Act §5, CAN-SPAM §7704(a)(2)⁠, EU Directive 2005/29/EC Articles 6–7, and Swedish Marketing Practices Act §§8 and 10.

Ezlo: correct this misleading marketing immediately

Your email claims that “every routine” will stop on August 1, including local schedules and sensor-triggered scenes. This contradicts your own FAQ, which states that local functionality continues and only cloud-dependent services require payment.

This campaign may violate Section 5 of the US FTC Act, the CAN-SPAM Act’s prohibition on deceptive subject lines, Articles 6–7 of EU Directive 2005/29/EC, and §§8 and 10 of Sweden’s Marketing Practices Act.

Please issue a correction clearly distinguishing local automation from remote access, voice control, push notifications and other cloud services.

2

Become independent of Vera/Ezlo Cloud

Ask your favorite AI for details regarding:

  1. Remote access: Enable your router’s VPN. This provides smooth, secure access to Vera/AltUI through its local IP.

  2. Alerts: Install Vera AlertPushover for notifications without Ezlo’s cloud.

  3. Full independence: Follow Vera-Decouple.

It works great.

3

Hello @Bobone,

The campaign message is intentionally broad because we cannot see or know the exact technical details of each customer’s setup, or which plugins, integrations, or cloud-dependent connections they rely on for their scenes and schedules. In many cases, routines that look “local” from the user’s perspective are actually implemented through components that require a cloud connection, and those will indeed stop working without an active service plan.

However, there are also ways to implement schedules and sensor-based automations that remain fully local and will continue to function, just as the FAQ describes. Because both types of configurations exist in the field, the email errs on the side of being thorough so that customers are aware that some of their routines may stop if any part of them depends on the cloud.

Our goal is to prevent unpleasant surprises for users, not to mislead them.

4

Some of the wording could have been better chosen.
Didn’t need to send to anyone but the primary users.
And it felt like getting spammed with push notifications and emails.

5

So now that vera has gone paywall in violation of the terms of which I purchased many units:

I see that all events are going into ‘waiting to upload’, over time this will ‘fill’ something up in the unit, I fear that this will at some point crash the system and possibly brick it. What has Vera / Ezlo done to test / mitigate this?

I am not going to risk going through the hoops of installing AlertPushover or Vera-Decoupler unless these are given the blessing of and supported by Vera / Ezlo.

6

Hello @DLR,

Thank you for sharing your concerns and for taking the time to explain your setup and worries in detail.

Regarding third‑party plugins such as AlertPushover or Vera‑Decoupler, we unfortunately cannot officially endorse, certify, or provide support for any solution that routes controller data to external servers or cloud services that we do not operate or control. This is primarily for security, privacy, and reliability reasons, as we have no visibility into how those external services handle data, how they are maintained, or how they might change over time.

Because of that, while some community‑developed tools may work well for certain users, they remain entirely at the user’s discretion and risk. We are not able to validate their safety, guarantee their behavior, or include them in our testing and support processes, so we cannot give them an official “blessing” from Ezlo.

7

I’m sure there is some fine print in the EULA that protects Vera but I wonder if there is enough to start a class action lawsuit?

8

@JonathanB
So you can guarantee the Vera is absolutely secure and can not be compromised at the current firmware level?

9

Hello @Tim88 ,

I understand your concerns regarding security, and they are absolutely valid. However, it is important to keep in mind that in the technology space no connected system can realistically be considered 100% secure, whether it is our platform or any other, because there will always be external factors, newly discovered vulnerabilities, and unforeseen usage scenarios that no vendor can fully anticipate or control.

For the same reason, we also cannot make any guarantees about the behavior, security, or support of third‑party solutions or services that we neither develop nor operate.

10

I think this would also contradict the statements in their communications that local functionality would not be affected.

12

So now that users are paying to maintain cloud functionality on the Vera and it’s still supported, what are your plans to patch any newly discovered vulnerabilities and keep the device as hardened as possible?

13

What about the monetary reason?