All past videos deleted, no warning send, and message sent "are you missing services yet". No way to restore videos I am told.

We were shocked to learn that our past service videos had been intentionally deleted by Ring with no way to restore them. We use our Ring devices daily, and they had been quite effective, providing a feeling of safety and allowing us to track events. We were very happy customers. On 12/26 at 8 PM, one of my family members mentioned that the past videos were inaccessible. We were tracking odd activities that seemed to target one of my neighbors over the Christmas holiday. I thought we might have missed updating the credit card information when we switched cards earlier in the year, and that an annual renewal was probably due. I logged in and updated the information, only to learn that all past videos seem to be irrecoverably lost to us, including the videos we tagged for review. After talking to your staff in two chats—the first of which was not helpful and in fact counterproductive—I learned that there was a message from Nov 5 (11/5) mentioning the upcoming renewal. There were no further messages in email or in the app (which we use daily) until a Dec 26 (12/26) 05:51 PM email cancellation notice. That message canceled the service and asked, "missing benefits already?" Well, the answer to that was, of course, yes. The message makes it clear that taking away past videos was an attempt to get us to renew. This cannot be your intended customer interaction policy. I could have understood a loss of video access until the renewal took place. But deletion with no warning and no way to restore them is shocking. No warning in the email and no warning in the app again seems silly, to be honest. An email message asking if we are missing the services seems like a taunt, followed by punishment by deleting the videos. You have managed in one action to turn loyal customers who trusted you and depended on you into ones who question whether you value us at all. To be honest, we are very disappointed in Ring at the moment. This puts into doubt our trust in you. We had ARLO at one point but felt you had developed a better service and converted when we upgraded. We thought the choice had been an excellent one. But to have you delete our videos during the holidays, essentially taunt us after you canceled, rather than simply asking us to check our payment method and pausing the service to give us time to update, brings your commitment to customer safety and trust into question. This year we will monitor your performance and consider your competitors, which was not on our radar until now. Please understand that we were happy with you and recommending your services to our family members. Here are some thoughts about where this process failed us, which I hope you pass on to the relevant people, not as a rant but as an attempt to help you improve your service: There should have been an email and ideally an in-app notification or warning about the payment issue. Adding a grace period before deleting videos makes sense. Avoid deleting videos and sending a message stating, "are you missing us," as it seems like you are intentionally inflicting pain on your customer by permanently destroying their data. Less important: Your chat bot deletes the session and doesn't allow the customer to have a copy, nor does it send an email. In our case, I had two interactions. Neither helped restore my videos, but the first person was not helpful and ended the conversation while I was typing. The second could not help but was attentive and helped me not simply believe your internal culture has failed. Anyhow, we will be monitoring your service this year and checking to see if you have changed for the worse. I hope you review this message and realize that with small adjustments you can keep otherwise happy customers like me in that camp. Unless something odd occurs or there is a big shift, we are unlikely to leave your service. Thank you for your time. I hope this year ends well for you and your staff and that 2025 is a good year for Ring. We will be monitoring you and making our decisions based on how we perceive your value in the relationship with us and our data, which you curate and protect for us.