Solar Step Light Turn On manually and stay on

RubioA · June 8, 2021, 12:21am

Hi Tom,

I again called today to request a refund and explained everything to the rep, she put me on hold while she spoke to her manager and they absolutely refused under no circumstance to issue a refund, no consideration give to the fact that I have been dealing with this for weeks. I understand that I’m past the 30 days, but I would have at least expected a partial refund, something… No, nothing, so I was transferred to technical support, she explained to the tech what I was experiencing and she walked me through the creation of schedules and proceeded to tell me there is no manual settings, blah blah blah, reading from a script… Completely dissatisfied with Ring at this point, I was SO excited to have these lights on my patio, they looked fabulous. Unfortunately I will have to eat the $200 cost of the 4 pathlights and bridge. But I already packed the 17 remaining lights ($560) I purchased from Amazon and they will be picked up and shipped back tomorrow…

Words cannot explain the frustration and disappointment I have. Something SO simple to add/fix and they refuse to do so… I might consider purchasing again in the future if they fix this, but as you can see by this thread here alone, there are TONS on the internet complaining about this very thing, that has been active for over a year…

I also proceeded to write a review on Amazon, I’m sure people will think twice about getting products from a company that just ignores customer like that…

BTW, I found these instructions: Controlling Your Smart Solar Lights with Light Schedules – Ring Help

There is a Note there that reads " Note: Schedules can be created at both the individual device and group level."

Which we now know it is false and not true… I even created a new group with my two wired floodcams and once created there is no scheduling option for the group, yet on that same instructions page from the link above:

What Products have the Light Schedules feature?
The following products currently have the Light Schedules feature:

Smart Solar Steplight
Smart Solar Pathlight
Smart Solar Floodlight
Smart Light Floodlight Wired
Smart Lighting Transformer
Smart Lighting PAR38 LED Lightbulb
Smart Lighting A19 LED Lightbulb

So, I leave it on your hands Tom, maybe you can talk to the higher ups and make a difference…

Greatly appreciated…

Chelsea_Ring · June 8, 2021, 9:55pm

Hey there @RubioA, stepping in here for Tom. I wanted to clear up any confusion that there may be on the Lights tile feature/turning on/off your device all at once, as well as the Light Schedules.

In regards to the Solar Smart Lighting devices, these devices will behave in the same matter that our Battery Smart Lighting devices do. This means that when you go select the option to turn on a device, whether you are tapping the button within the Lights tile from the Dashboard to turn them all on/off at once or doing it individually within Devices, that the lights will be on for a maximum of 15 minutes, and then turn off. Just to ensure you’re aware of the option to manually turn on/off the Lights, please make sure you have the Lights tile enabled from your Shortcuts, so that it appears on the Dashboard. After you’ve selected/tapped on the Lights tile from the Dashboard, you will be directed to a page that give you the option to turn them on all on from a group. It looks something like this (a screenshot from my Lights tile, and my group of my Indoor lights):

Although, because of the 15 minute limitation, we recommend neighbors to create a schedule, as the schedule will help you keep your lights on for long during certain times. We also state in the Help Center Article that you’ve pointed out as well that the lights will not be on full brightness during a schedule, as when scheduled, all of the Ring Smart Lighting solar products have a single brightness level specifically designed to maximize battery life. You can visit the Help Center Article to see more of what brightness level your device may be on during this schedule.

With this in mind, I wanted to dive deep into the point you made about the schedules being available to create at the individual device and group level, but you were seeing a schedule under each individual device. This is due to the way the Light Schedules must be executed within the Ring App to ensure all device turn on or off when prompted. For example and like your situation, if you have a group with all 21 devices and you only want one schedule for that group you should see 21 schedules - one for each device. This does create the schedule for the whole group, as it applies the schedule to each device in the group, individually. Therefore, the statement of schedules being able to be created from the individual device and the group level is true, as you can apply it to a whole group or an individual device if you’d choose.

Because of the way the way this is set up, you will need to edit the schedule on the individual level for each device, if you wish to change the group schedule from something you may have previous set up. This means that if you set up a Light Schedule from 6PM-9PM, only to want to change it to 6PM-10PM, you would have to delete all the schedules for each individual device and then make the new schedule on the group level, to then apply it back down to each individual device. We understand that this can be a taxing process, especially when you have as many devices as you do, but if you end up seeing more than one schedule for a light, you will need to address that to avoid issues with them turning on or off appropriately, so I recommend checking that to verify that you are not running into that if you still want to make this work.

I apologize that you had this kind of experience over the phone with our support team, and I apologize that there is nothing that we can do on the Community in regards to the refund, as this is a neighbor-to-neighbor support forum and not a direct line to support. We are able to talk with our teams here to gain insight on what issues our neighbors in the Community run into so we can provide feedback to the internal teams as well as our neighbors, but we cannot aid in refunds, returns, or help with the personal devices on your account.

I appreciate your feedback on this regardless, and hope that I may have cleared the air on expectations of our devices and how they function. I will make sure to pass on your feedback to our teams so we can work on making the experience better for our neighbors in any way we can, as well as making our information clear for all to understand. Thank you, @RubioA.

Sam55 · March 28, 2022, 5:25am

Why the hell, User can’t choose what he wants. You are not my parent to decide on our behalf. It is ridiculous that

You are not letting light to run for more than 15 mins when it is started manually
You are not letting me choose the Brightness level for light during light schedule period

For God’s sake please make those changes. After all it is going to be just a software upgrade. Otherwise advertise properly that system is super smart and make decisions on behalf of dumb users like us.

It is like Apple teaching its users, how to hold iPhones correctly.