Warning about Ring Protect Plans

Received my doorbell as a Christmas present. Everything had been fine and I was happy with the device performance. I wanted to find out whether I would miss the cloud features provided as part of the trial subscription before making the decision to opt in to a monthly fee - so I allowed it to end yesterday.

Today, I find out that I cannot reliably use Live View from the phone application, live view only appears to be working when someone presses the doorbell. I suspect that because the device is no longer in constant contact with the cloud, that it may be going to sleep and refusing to wake up from the phone application.

I’ve also discovered that the motion zones I had set up (that I’d tested were working near perfectly and ignoring the desired areas) are now not functioning at all - any motion is triggering a notification and the device is ignoring or choosing not to apply an edit of the configuration.

Now I’m left with a device that constantly sends motion notifications to which I am unable to use the Live View to react to see what’s triggered it. Features that I believed should have worked regardless of the subscription

So I’m now in a position where I must turn off motion sensing or pay a monthly fee to get it back.

In my opinion, this a defect in the product that needs resolving.

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VERY DISAPPOINTED that the Ring only works the first 30 days. After that you have to mess with it for days or pay their monthly fee to have it continue to work.

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My Live View stopped working after my trial period ended if I attempted to use it immediately after receiving a motion alert.

I disabled the Advanced Motion Detection setting and Live View started working again with the adverse effect of increasing the motion zone area, so I had to decrease the motion sensitivity.

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Hi there - I have had this happen to me over the last few days and my trial finished a week or so ago - however, I think this is more of a firmware or technical issue rather than a scam. If you turn off Motion Detection all together (just as a test) I have found that Live View works all the time. As soon as I turn on Motion Detection, whether or not notification are on, within an hour, Live View stops working.

I suspect this is a firmware bug that needs to be addressed. For now, I will keep Motion Detection off as it has only started happening in the last few days for me, and I don’t personally ‘need’ Motion Detection as my VD3 is facing a road.

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After writing my own comment I tried turning off just the Advanced Motion Detection and that seems to work for me also.

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Exactly what has happened to me.

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Hi, all-

I just purchased a unit for my wife at Christmas and as the trial expired the same thing has happened for me.

Since we’re both working from home, though, I’ve been able to correlate my app notifications with real video of NOTHING HAPPENING OUTSIDE when the app says there is.

The good news is with this data, RING Team, the local news outlets are very interested to make sure potential buyers are aware of this coercion. I’ve received more app notifications in the last two days than I have the other 29 that I had the product set up and installed, and that’s real data you can count on.

Sincerely,
The Unimpressed

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Like everyone else, I noticed immediately upon the end of the free Ring Protection trial that I lost access to my live feed entirely. I went through all the troubleshooting tips, and NOTHING. And no, Ring, this isn’t isolated to certain days that you identify slow video feeds. All of my upload/download speeds are fine, there’s no one else on my wifi using any devices, and no thanks community manager- I don’t need to hear any other fake BS solutions.
Thank you to the community for confirming what I suspected was true- literally within SECONDS of buying the 1 year subscription, like MAGIC, my live feed was back. A miracle! A miracle, which I’m sure Ring would say is a coincidence, and certainly not evidence of any scam.
This is an absolute racket- Ring is weaseling out of providing what they promise, and forcing customers to purchase services they don’t want or need, simply to get the most basic functionality from the product. I can’t DISCOURAGE others strongly enough from finding alternative products and ending support of Ring.

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Count me in for yet another highly dissatisfied customer. My trial 30 day period ended today and, surprise surprise, so did my ability to view my live feed. Hadn’t had a SINGLE issue until today. And today alone I’ve received drastically more alerts than ever before. There is no issue with the internet or wifi or anything other than this shady company and their BS. BBB here I come!

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Same problem here. Trial period ends, and suddenly motion is detected every time a car drives by, even though I have the motion detection zones set up to ignore the road. It never happened once in the first 30 days, but now it happens multiple times per hour. I sure hope this is just a software bug that will soon be resolved and not a scam to get people to pay monthly.

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I had the same thing happen. It’s totally useless and frustrating! I may have chosen to get the subscription if I had known it was necessary for the product to work but I don’t like being tricked and lied to. This is not ok.

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This is upsetting. Worked perfectly until the trial period ended. Seriously going to try and tell me that right after 30 days it’s my wifi and not your software. Now I have subscribed and it’s still not working.

My guess is I have to go through set up all over again. This is not an easy to use product. Not at all happy that I now need to go through set up again and that the device stopped working immediately after the trial period. That’s some BS

Ironically 15 min after I signed up and paid for a subscription it started working again. And my wifi isn’t a problem anymore. Go figure. Not pleased. And those saying it should not effect well apparently it does.

Brian

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Jennifer, Look at all the comments from new users of your product all having the same problem that occurred when the free trial ended. Our internet signal has not changed. It worked fine during the free trial but when that ended it caused the live stream to fail. My internet is still fine. I do not want to spend hours looking into this problem, when we know Ring has the solution but is not offering the solution.

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When you look at the list of threads having the same problem and Ring denying the problem, makes me question if I want to sign up for a subscription with a company I am not sure I trust to protect my property.

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Same issues here, I’ve had a ring subscription for roughly 2 years. It lapsed a couple of days ago and I fully intended to renew, I now can’t access live view, I’m receiving notifications constantly for people walking past the house (approx 30-40ft away) despite having zone’s set up just around the front door.

Nothing has changed other than my subscription running out.

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Same issue. I have warnings for days now. “You have three days left” “you have two days left”, yesterday it said “tomorrow your protect plan will expire, you will lose all your saved videos.” then I was woken up at 1100 just now with a motion alert. I clicked live view and it says “streaming error”?

My internet connection is fine, I’m on the local network, but have not been able to connect.

I will speak to consumer protection about this tomorrow. I will also be looking for a refund from jb-hifi. I feel this sort of behaviour breaks some consumer laws in Australia.

Very unhappy with Ring.

Read the comments Jennifer. It cannot be a coincidence. One or two maybe but 30 people with the same issues.

I for one think I’m entitled to a refund.

Let me guess?, You can’t get a refund after 30days. The same amount of time the protect trial plan lasts for?

Add me to the list. Trial ended and suddenly I receive alerts for cars driving by despite having motion zones set up at the front porch. Live view is spotty, seems to work better when I am close to the doorbell. Internet works great. Never had a single issue during the first 30 days. I’m sure a refund is out of the question at this point. I had a feeling this would happen, I will not be paying for a subscription now just because of this, don’t care if it’s 25 cents a month.

Sorry to hear about this concern persisting, neighbors. When it comes to video connection, it is important to consider wifi and mobile connection variables. Narrowing this down can be quick and easy with just a few steps. Give our Rapid Ring app a try, if you are not already using it, as it is designed for the quickest access to live view, which is most important when not you are subscribed to a Protect Plan subscription. Please also ensure there is not a vpn enabled. As it looks like most of you have covered the network troubleshooting steps, your device health RSSI should be sufficient as reflected in this Community post.

In addition to the above, and as I’m seeing many neighbors mention motion event concerns, try disabling Advanced Motion Detection settings such People Only Mode, or even setting all your settings to default. If live view works with the most default settings, feel free to enable your desired settings and ensure the Ring app is performing as intended with each, on your mobile device. Pease let us know if this helps. :slight_smile:

No this didn’t help. Since my last post, live view won’t work properly. It will work every now and again.

I have an enterprise UDM pro with fibre. Internet is not a problem. I have 3 Unifi AP’s throughout the house with one only 4 metres away from the ring device.

Since the protect trial plan ended, this ring device which I paid more than 300AUD for, has not been working properly so please have this looked at.

I have a few more questions.

Since the Protect plan has ended, is it safe to assume you do not store the videos anymore? Or do you still store the videos but don’t give access to the owner of the ring device?

I ask this because I can still see a large amount of traffic going from my ring device? 120MB has been uploaded to ring servers since the Protect plan ended. Why would this device need to upload that much data if the device isn’t storing any videos?

I am just made of questions right now.