Customer Service? Or Missing the Point?
My dashcam, fully working for 4 months, went into permanently on mode after a firmware update, rendering it unusable. I am on the cusp of returning the camera to Amazon as being faulty. Here is my correspondence with Vantrue so that you can judge if my one star rating is justified:
[ME] I have left the following message on your Reddit forum, but have yet to have any response. I updated my E2's firmware on Sunday 11th February and today the car would not start. On examining the SD card, I see that the camera has been recording permanently since the update, for a full three days, 24 hours a day . It would appear that it is not entering parking mode. However, looking at the settings, I am unable to change the parking mode from OFF to ON as it will not allow me to select that option. The camera has been unreliable since it was purchased in November with intermittent SD card errors and camera freezes and I thought that a firmware update would fix that, but doing so has made the issue worse. I am still within my legal 6 months window to reject the product as being defective at the time of manufacture, but I want to give Vantrue one more chance to fix this issue before I return the camera to Amazon. Given that it is impossible to switch parking mode on since the firmware update, how do I go about fixing this issue?
[Vantrue] Thanks for your contacting. Since we were in the middle of Chinese New Year, we didn't get back to you in time on reddit.
1. It should be the hardwired kit wiring error that causes the E2 dash cam can't enter the parking mode. If the yellow ACC wire is connected to the permanent power fuse, after the car is turned off, the hardwired kit can't judge the low voltage protection, so the dash cam will record continuously for 24 hours.
Please connect the buck wire in this way (black wire to car battery negative fuse, red to positive fuse, yellow to in ACC+ fuse)
2. SD card error, it should be occasional bad card speed, card speed can't keep up, so the main camera will report error. You can format the card or replace a card to solve the problem. The frozen screen may be caused by poor contact of the rear camera cable, if unplugging the rear camera cable when the screen freezes solves the problem, then replace the rear camera cable with a new one to solve the problem.
[ME] Thank you for your response. However, this problem has only happened since the firmware update. Before that, there was no issue and the dash cam was entering parking mode correctly. I will check the wiring, but that is not the main issue.
It is only since the firmware upgrade that there is not the option to change parking mode on the screen. Parking Mode states OFF and when I select it, it just goes back to the higher level menu. I cannot change the Parking Mode options on the screen, whereas I could before the firmware update. I take the point with regard to the SD Card, but this problem is intermittent and can usually be resolved by removing and reinserting the SD card. Interestingly, after the firmware upgrade, there were no SD Card errors, so I am going to assume that this was a firmware issue rather than an SD Card issue.
With regard to the frozen screen, this is another intermittent issue. However, as to why this would make the front camera freeze is beyond me. That feels like poor engineering. And as the camera and cables are only four months old, this feels like a manufacturing error of the camera and/or cables.
I am now awaiting a response to those points.
16 February 2024
Unprompted review