Warning about Ring Protect Plans

I subscribed before my trial ended. I had no issues either. The day it went from basic to pro was either the same day or the next. I didn’t have to reset or do anything. That was my experience at least.

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I too had the same problem. I just bought the Ring Video Doorbell 3 with Echo Show 5 in October on Prime Day 2020. Once the trial expired, the live connection will not connect (day & night). It worked just fine during the free initial trial period. That tells me that Ring is trying to get you to subscribe and will make it hard on you if you aren’t a subscriber. Its awful and I don’t recommend any of the Ring products.

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I too bought the ring 3 around Thanksgiving. After the 30 day trial period, the device would go off on motion about 100 times an hour. After calling ring and upgrading to the next level of support, they replaced the unit. The second unit did the exact same thing. The day the 30 day trial ended, the live view quit working, the motion detection didn’t work but I received the annoying sound on my phone continuously. I called Ring and went through their same by the book procedures in resetting and nothing. The lady told me it was my internet with packet losses. Since I do this for a living, I knew she was wrong. After telling them what was the issue, her supervisor gave me a 7 day trial period. Miraculously, the device starting working again and no motion detection every 2 seconds. It’s working fine right now. I told her great, I don’t want your recording plan. I just want what ring promises without the plan which is motion and the live view. She told me the only way to probably keep that is to buy a plan.

Follow up: I received the 7 day trial and the minute it expired my phone started blowing up again. I called again and was told again there was motion at my front door…there wasn’t. It went off 102 times in under 30 minutes. The support lady kept asking me if the noise going off was my doorbell and wanted me to go through their process again. I asked three times to transfer me to a supervisor who wouldn’t come on the phone. The support lady told me they applied another 7 day trial and I would have to purchase a plan if I wanted the constant announcements to stop. She admitted to me that I needed to buy a plan for it to work correctly. Wow…not false advertising at all on Ring’s part.

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I am having the same issue!!

Is it me or as soon as the Free trial expires the ring door bell expires with it too. I can’t see video like I use to when the trial was on but as soon it expires so does my live feed. What’s going on. Is this part of a scam to make you pay for a service

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Hi there, neighbors! The Protect Plan subscriptions and free trial do not impact your devices live view ability. Often times, when subscribed or in free trial period, neighbors might not notice when they answer an event after the notification times out or video is already recorded. These moments are, however, crucial when you are not subscribed.

When an event occurs, answering the notification immediately will help to ensure the video is caught. If not, triggering live view from the Ring app manually is a great alternative. For this same reason, wifi signal strength is most important for live features and may need to be optimized if video is not connecting. Feel free to check out our Community post about RSSI and this one for Live View troubleshooting steps.

I recommend also trying out the Rapid Ring app, as it is designed specifically for the quickest access to live view. Please ensure there is not a vpn enabled on your mobile device. I hope this helps! :slight_smile:

Very disappointed with ring doorbell at door bell I am pulling 159mbps down and 130 mbps up rssi is -62 no problems with conductivity in my home I install and maintain internet for a living. That being said everything worked perfectly until free trial was over now you can not manually look as live view if doorbell is rung you can not see or talk to person either through notification alerts or by opening app and clicking live view to do it manually just keep getting connection error message. Information provided by company in comment above state it should be working but recordings won’t be saved which is expected. With this many people having same issue after free trial is over this is obviously a scam to get you to pay for recordings which I planned on doing just didn’t before free trial was over as I have other cameras covering same area now seeing so many people they did this too I don’t think I will be doing now and think we all should contact the better Better business bureau this is not ok I don’t need the video for real but it is nice mainly bought cause my house didn’t have a doorbell but as I said I have front covered already with cameras this is not ok to do to customers ring

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Not true mine is doing the same thing. It’s an obvious that you are trying to get you customers to purchase monthly a" Protection Plan" . Bad business practice there are to many alternatives. Very disappointed.

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Same problem with mine it’s obvious they are trying to force you into a monthly “Protection Plan”. I will start looking for other look alternatives. Very disappointing.

I figured it out out the problem … you have to re set up your camera. After taking off cover and holding set up button to put in set up mode and reset up doorbell it has been working fine. It did take an update and has been working fine afterwards… never mind it only worked for about 10 min then went back to same as soon as I made this post.

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My subscription ended today, so did my live view. After I finish documenting all the comments here I’ll be looking forward to the lawsuit.

PO’d

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Same. This is the second time this has happened too. Ring can’t get their act together to even let me pay for the subscription which I’m trying to do. Everything works fine until the second the subscription ends. No live view. Rings constantly.

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Hello neighbors. Thank you for sharing your feedback. As Marley previously stated, the Protect Plan subscriptions and free trial should not impact your devices live view ability, nor should the end of the 30 day free trial. If, after your trial ends, you experience your Live View not connecting, please run a speed test and ensure you have a proper connection to your device. Please follow the Live View Troubleshooting steps, here, for more information. I also noted that a few comments on this thread were from yesterday, January 19, 2021. Please be aware that yesterday we did have video processing delays that have since been resolved. You can find more information at status.ring.com. To learn more about what is included for free or in a Protect Plan, please review our Ring Protect Plan page on Ring.com. If you would like more assistance and to ensure your device is up and running to its full potential, please give our support team a call at 800-656-1918. Thank you.

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Expiration of the free trial shouldn’t impact live view but it does. I have the same issue. My free trial ended and so has my ability to access live view. I now have the most expensive door bell you can buy. Considering the number of complaints I think it’s time for Ring to admit there may be a problem and start doing some testing.

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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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