We’re a small business with a big voice in the DC real estate market and we were swindled and misled by Ring.
We purchased a Ring Alarm system, a lock, a doorbell and 7 cameras about a year ago. We were clearly informed that we had the “top” equipment and service and that we had cellular backup for everything, including the cameras. We literally wrote this down as we were told it and repeated it back when purchasing to ensure we had everything we needed to protect our warehouse full of furniture and artwork.
The system has actually worked great for the majority of the time, we use the cameras often, we let deliveries in when we’re out at jobs and it’s worked wonderfully. We are one of the top home stagers in the high-end market in the DC area and we’ve recommended your product to many homeowners, realtors and developers.
However last month our system went completely out, it had absolutely no service, no cameras and we had to leave a job we were staging and rush back to the warehouse from another state, not knowing if there was an emergency happening and if we were going to find an empty warehouse when we arrived back. We had made absolutely sure we would never be in that situation when we purchased Ring but there we were, panicking and not having any idea what was happening. Ring support staff had no idea and were no help.
We had not been broken into, the system was just down completely. We were told for 3 hours (they made us take apart the entire doorbell, and do all kinds of ridiculous, useless stuff for 3 hours) that our WiFi had gone out, although the WiFi was up and running for everything else in the warehouse. When I asked why the cellular backup hadn’t switched on we were told we didn’t have that feature and we had to upgrade to a more expensive package to receive it. This was completely different than what we were originally told (and sold) so apparently we were bait-and-switched with our original purchase. So we upgraded to the highest-available package and were clearly told that NOW we had cellular backup for everything, including the cameras.
Unfortunately, this past Friday, about a month later, the same thing happened. The entire system went down again, no cameras, no alarm, nothing. Except this time we were in the warehouse when this happened. We were all using WiFi at the time, and we can assure you there was no WiFi glitch, not even for a second. We called again, this time and begged to speak to someone at a higher level and our request was refused, again for hours. I (being the owner) cancelled plans and stayed for hours getting nowhere, being told all kinds of conflicting information. The people I was forced to speak with had substantial difficulties with English and couldn’t repeat what the problem actually was (literally for hours continually refusing to transfer me and get help.)
After hours, I was finally transferred to someone who knew what they were talking about and we realized that not only had we been swindled the first time we purchased our Ring system, but were swindled and lied to the second time we purchased/upgraded to a higher system. Apparently the new package we had upgraded to still won’t transmit camera pics cellularly unless a newer, more expensive base station was now purchased. Also, the alarm (only) should have been working through Ring cellular modem, but were now told there must be something defective with our cellular modem in our base station and that’s why when it disconnects from WiFi, the cellular modem doesn’t work. Of course since we’ve been misled every time we’ve spoken with Ring, we’re not quite trusting this new recommendation of yet another more expensive Ring product. And please understand, it’s not spending the money that’s the problem, it’s that we trusted Ring, and it’s support staff that our warehouse, full of countless amounts of high-end furniture and artwork was protected all this time, even if the Wifi was out, but we were critically unprotected.
We’re stunned at the level of incompetence and possibly fraudulent behavior we’ve been subject to at the hands of your support staff. Understandably, we’ll be making sure we never put our company’s reputation on the line again with Ring recommendations because we’d never want one of our customers to have to go through what we’ve been through dealing with your support staff. As a business owner it’s really frustrating because we actually loved your product, it works beautifully 99% of the time, but you support what could be an awesome product with a support staff that is intolerable and incompetent at best and left our business unprotected.