Devices, poor experience and no customer service help. *Warning to all*

Unfortunately I have to post this within the community since calling gets me nowhere. As a customer for almost 2 years now I have gone through every single device this company has created assuming my home (originally my moms home) was literally at fault and I needed a different model which had a different feature, when in all reality every device has 1 good feature and the rest faults. I have gone round and round with customer support over the dang service when I have top notch service in my home and the best out of my neighborhood, yet was talked into the Chime pro ontop of the multiple doorbells, cams, security cams and spotlights I now own. I did not originally buy the ring product to have this many of them, and to have this many issues. I needed a security camera, that was it. And sad to say, due to all of this companies faults especially recently with all of the systems being inoperable and having glitches to where they either go off line for everybody, stop recording, notifying and now currently the systems are claiming there is no subscription (which obviously means no recording [still])ā€¦ which is unimaginably the worst timing within the past couple monthsā€¦ because I now have an actual folder of police reports from my house getting broke into and robbed 5 times (!!!) in 2 months and they all coincide either with the systems ā€œgoing downā€ or this companies notorious 2 year problem with products glitching and not recording or delaying. Itā€™s very convenient that my house and the neighborhoods within a radius of 3 miles have had a trend of break ins that coincide wonderfully with their analytics of systems going down at the same time. Very curious. So this is not just an issue with me, but stats reported are showing it from people everywhere that own these products and its surprisingly a big issue in a 3 mile radius where I am, of not just house and car break ins, but robberies and a**aults with all ring owners while this companies having system failures. I applaud the timing of this because the ones doing it are bold while the world is on lockdown at homeā€¦ but I applaud you because all the assaults, vehicle and home burglaries are done to those of us who work in public safety and are at work protecting and serving the people and yet you cant keep your systems from failing and now theyā€™re being investigated due to them ā€œtrending analytically the moment they go downā€. Itā€™s a serious problem and Iā€™ll share my side now. <br>Iā€™d like to add, to anybody that is blessed to see this before they probably delete it from community view to save you from the hassle. This is my personal experience and to boot, which this is something they can never give back to me, but Iā€™ll add it for everybody to know. When you pay for your subscription you may not think itā€™s a big deal to have a longer ā€œcloud storageā€ than they are giving you (max 30 days unless you download the vids) but honestly if youā€™re paying for these devices and to have ā€œlive viewā€ and access to YOUR videos outside and in your home then you should have no limit to the amount of time the videos are on your account in your cloud space. I can understand a limit in space and amount of videos but keeping for only 30 days is ridiculous because itā€™s the freaking cloud. But I may be a little biased due in part that my Mother passed away and I called and begged them, BEGGED them to give me time to get out of the hospital and get home to access her account to manually save those videos of the last time she was alive. And now I dont have those last days we spent together on the fourth of july in our front yard. All because I had to download them, my own videos, of my own life, on my own devices with my own subscription to the plan to be able to keep videos on what is an endless cloud with GB limits, not time limits! And this company took that from me. They couldve easily given me a couple days until I couldā€™ve retrieved those videos. And what made it difficult for me to not be able to download to my phone in the hospital bed was because this companies cruel and money hungry systems that fail continuously would not allow multiple downloads of my own recorded videosā€¦ you have to go in and click each one while playing them to download. So Iā€™m sure you can imagine this tremendous issue with such a simple logical system. Iā€™ve worker in IT and web design and there is no need to be charging for a 30 day ā€œRENTALā€ of the cloud, only limits on GB space and it is childsplay to write the code to allow multiple selections to download ones own personal videos of their own devices to their computers if thats the system and game yall want to play. <br>So be forewarned people, that their products have many issues (coming from a 2 yr customer), customer support is hard to reach and when you do it is always either their systems were updating, has a minor glitch but is fixed, ā€œyou may need to replace your faulty deviceā€, or the best excuse yet is ā€œcheck your wifi signal & with your ISPā€ - ā€œits your service that is causing the issue, may we suggest our Ring Chime Proā€ and ontop of all of this, every one of your videos which may be evidence or be important later (either something suspicious that comes to light with a robbery, r*pe or mā€“der, or my case) but your videosā€¦ I cannot stress enough that these are YOUR videos not theirs, will be deleted from the infinite time limit (*not size;GB) cloud that they charge you for. Please people be aware of these problems because they have ruined my life. <br>And to my original point of this post, the systems have ā€œglitchedā€ for the umpteenth time in 2 years, and the past 2-2.5 months with their back to back system and device failures I have conveniently been broken into and robbed each time (5x, 5 police reports), or at the very least the system was delayed to begin recording [as usual] so it only caught my screen door shutting. <br>As somebody that works in public safety and has shifts of up to 24 hours I should not be having to worry about this problem with all the devices I was gimmicked into purchasing and putting my trust in yalls hands. So this will be fixed immediately or the next time you hear from me it will be through a 3rd party.

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Never had any issues with over 20 devices on my house. Never been robbed except before I had Ring. Once I was robbed I got the Ring products. I adopted a dog. Got a CCTV system as a back up and shotguns as well. Many years later. Everything still works fine. No issues at all. So not everyone has the same experience. I know many that would agree. As for the recordings. Itā€™s all stated. If you canā€™t find the time in a month to download oh so important videos, thatā€™s your fault. You rant on go on as being public safety. Then you should know better. Iā€™m public safety too. Your failures and your own and not Rings. And if you get robbed that often and do little more than just install a few cams, youā€™ve not done enough. Moving to a better area would be my first step. So, going on a rant and then using a bunch of tags looks childish. So, donā€™t group everyone in your failures and say all Ring products donā€™t work. My work as stated and I know all the rules. No problems at all. No more house being robbed either.

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Hi @J_3141 - first Iā€™d like to say that we are here to help no matter what. Until recently, due to COVID-19, our support team remained available 24/7 via chat, phone or email (please note, **As of March 29, English support is available 5AM - 8PM PDT, seven days a week- more information can be found, here). **

**I was unable to find any support tickets with this particular email address associated with your Community login. Do you mind going into detail what seems to be going on? **

**Iā€™ve noted, from your post, that you are upset about not being able to view/save past videos. Please note, that if subscribed to a Ring Protect Plan, youā€™re able to view, access and download past videos for up to 60 days. You mentioned not having videos from the 4th of July, which unfortunately is past that 60 day window. I highly encourage to do a ā€˜swoopā€™ of your videos every month or few weeks and save any video you find important. To learn more about your monthly plan, click here. **

Iā€™d also like to point out, that although you may have the highest internet speed available in your area, youā€™ll want to make sure that you have enough for multiple devices. Weā€™re happy to go into more detail on this if you would like.

**The Community offers great insights as well as peer to peer help. Weā€™d love to help get your device(s) up and running, but will need more information to do so. Please let us know how we can assist. **

Thanks

J is 100% correct. And to be perfectly honest anyone who disagrees is either riding their luck, trying to justify their spending, or simply does not know what they are talking about. Comparatively speaking, there are other economical options for a better quality. It is without a doubt a money hungry system. The company doesnā€™t even have a repair service that can repair at a cost. Itā€™s either you pay for their $10 per month warranty (which to me isnā€™t worth it) or buy a new one. Itā€™s a win-win for ring. Spotlight cams have a faulty design whether you are trying to replace the battery and trying to click the bottom back in or thinking that it is at least water resistant to normal weather conditions. In my areaā€¦ I have normal weather conditionsā€¦ owned one for 18 months and the battery terminal gets damaged. If these products are made to be outside and you know they are water sensitive then why not even offer a protective case ? They have them for smartphones. But the reason why is because they want the customer to pay for the warranty or purchase a brand new one. Other companies donā€™t charge extra or have time limits for your footage on cloud. It supposed to be your cloud not rented cloud. If you do a comparison to other surveillance systems you will find ring products and services are not worth it at all. Iā€™m speaking from experience as well.

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Hi @treaselm0315. At Ring, our goal is to empower neighbors with an affordable, effective way to monitor and secure their homes, in our mission to make neighborhoods everywhere safer. Many of our features, devices, and solutions come right from the consideration of our neighborsā€™ experience and their direct feedback, as we always value our neighborsā€™ input.

While our outdoor devices are rated for weather resistance, any extreme weather conditions, such as a torrential rain, might affect the Camera. Our devices all feature various mounting options to optimize functionality and help you obtain the best experience, however, every environment varies and sometimes additional solutions are necessary. If you are concerned about weather, or water, reaching your Camera, weā€™ve seen many neighbors use a guard or shield component to prevent this.

If you are still experiencing concerns with your battery hatch or Camera in general, feel free to reach out to our support team for further assistance. Please also check out our Community Guidelines to ensure your posts are constructive and helpful to all neighbors in the Community.

Marley,

I wish technical information regarding the limits of water resistance was on the label. My camera was located on the underside of the roof minimal water contact and yet the battery terminal was damage. This is only after 1 year and a half of ownership. $200 down the drain. An item designed specific to outdoor application should have lasted longer than this. And the fact that no where on the actual label states the limits of water resistance does not warn or advise to purchase an aftermarket protector. Furthermore these accessories should be offered by ring as a RECOMMENDATION. By completed disregarding the topic altogether on a product specifically designed for outdoor use, is not proper marketing ethic.

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I apologize for the excessive rant. Iā€™d like to say it wasnā€™t my intention to stir the pot, but I really just wanted answers to commonplace issues that simply couldā€™ve & shouldā€™ve been resolved sooner. I will pull this post down here soon but I wanted to acknowledge the timely response given by the admin. Every area is different, so every service varies and my run of the mill happenings trying to reach customer support or have a continuing solid signal is only my issue and nobody elses, so it doesnā€™t reflect the company as a whole. But I would like to just add that yes this is a different email bc it began under my moms account which I eventually took over and transferred the rest of the subscription over along with. And that specific issue regarding videos was something I called in about when it was still under her email that I had access to but was in the hospital. And I reached out while in there to see if they could extend it by a week due to the subscription ending one of the days I was in there, so I had just realized at that point that it was ending and will disappear by the following day. It was bad timing yes. But prior to I did not know they disappeared from the server of the acct holder. So when they said they couldnā€™t do anything and I had to download the videos, I was laid up in the hospital attempting to manually do each one via my phone and unfortunately the rest is history.
Thatā€™s just an issue that I wish the company could fix or allow videos that are starred to stay on the acct holders cloud indefinitely, or just better yet the ability to mass select and download those videos. In the end this is an issue of mine, reflects my problems and nobody elses nor the company. Its merely a feature I wish they could implement so nobody in the future goes through the conundrum I did. Thank you admin for your response and demeanor toward my rash remarks.

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I fully agree with you. Recently I bought my first video doorbell, but especially the poor support in the installation, answering many questions, and unreliable working of the camera I think this will be my last purchase as well.

I tried the community, but - as I got it in a reply to my complaint - community people are just volunteers, sharing their experience, but NOT an official support from Ring.

When you encounter serious technical concerns, issues, you want more than just hunting in the thousands of community discussion.

My camera records mostly the back of a person who is leaving the front door, but not when he is approaching, so face is not visible (camera motion sensitivity set to High)
It records passing cars, but not the postman dropping in letters. (People Only mode enabledā€¦)
Camera do not respond at all for more than 24 hours, until someone pushed the doorbell.
I could not reach (activate) the camera remotely from another friendā€™s wifi network, ut only through 4G gsm network. Even then activation takes so long, that the person ringing my doorbell has left, so I have no chance to talk to him.

Should I mention more? This seems a quality issue, and all what I got from the community was to reset the camera to factory defaultā€¦

I would need a better support to use more Ring device, not even talking about to promote it to my friends

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I have a bunch of ideas as to fix your issues. But Iā€™m only a community member. So I wonā€™t bother. But Ring does have a customer service. So, why not give them a call. Also, you do realize that every phone can be different, every wifi can be different and every mounting can be different. So, there are many things to check. But hereā€™s the contact information. Hopefully they will do better than people that have fixed issues in their own and also own many devices that work fine for them.
https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360036196372-Get-in-Touch

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Zsoltā€¦ I agree with you. I have my fair share of problems. As proven again ā€¦ā€you get what you pay for.ā€ Itā€™s better to invest in a wired security system

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I feel your pain.

I just put mine up today. It canā€™t detect motion until Iā€™m 5 feet from it.

I went to the support system, to chat with someone. Here is there exact response:

Unfortunately, device troubleshooting and first time setup are temporarily unavailable in Chat.

For self-help content, visit:

support.ring.com

For product news and neighbor message boards, visit:

community.ring.com

That seems like a company that doesnā€™t really want customers. Now to find the boxes and send this thing back before the return window runs out.

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Hi @RSaunders. Our chat team does have a limited scope at this time and is unable to do device troubleshooting over chat. No worries though, our support team over the phone directly can assist with this. Please give our support team a call at one of the numbers available here. Weā€™re taking additional steps to protect our team and help reduce the spread of COVID-19. This has resulted in longer than normal wait times. If you are outside of the US, please read our response to COVID-19 here to see how to contact support.

Sure, but on the phone I canā€™t email a video comparing what actually happened to what the Ring saw. People on the phone from some distant call center who are following a script isnā€™t the same as thoughtful tech support. Iā€™ll give the phone a try, and update this if it changes my mind.

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Got the same exact warning RSaunders. Iā€™ve had the service barely a month, purchased the ā€œPlusā€ tier a year at a time both for the savings and the 60 days storage. I went whole hog, after seeing how many people in the area are being robbed during the pandemic. I have a wired system that has 3 cameras, CCTV (color/audio) with only local storage capability. Itā€™s been fine up until now, but with all the home breakins going on I wanted extra reassurance. I read up on having to download my videos a few weeks into storing them, so that I did not lose them.

My problem is that everything older than 1 week says ā€œProcessing, unable to retreiveā€ OR ā€œThis video has been deleted.ā€

Let me be clear. I have not deleted any videos. Nothing. I was going through them again today to make sure I was caught up, had the important ones downloaded, as my account is now a month old. I have 60 days to download the videos.

Supposedly.

Anything older than about a week to 10 days is gone. I ā€œhadā€ full-face videos of local prowlers that the police are looking for, have posted pictures of, and offered to provide proof that they had indeed been roving through folks back yards. I ā€œhadā€ perfectly clear full body videos of my sisters boyfriend vandalizing a neighbors property and car - more covid related madness. Iā€™m unable to even access them, and am being repeatedly told I must have cleared the alerts for them in my app. Even though that begs the question ā€œWhy the heck would you use that method, on a mobile device, to permanently delete stored videos, potentially of crimes?!?!ā€ Arenā€™t there evidence laws that data/cloud providers have to comply with simply to do business here in the US?

Regardless of how stupid using that method without at least a triple check/warning system in place, and hey how about an undelete, just in case? ā€¦ I never deleted any videos. I certainly never chose to erase any alerts. This looks like a case of serious hardware failure that is getting blamed/excused by pointing at the customer and saying ā€œWe told you it was permanent!ā€. Simply following some industry ā€œbest practicesā€ could simplify your support problems, clear up a lot of customer complaints (Iā€™m betting), AND make it almost impossible for any single full SAN/DAS/NAS failure to completely take out any customers data.

Needless to say, Iā€™m not too happy. I bought 4 cameras, and one of the doorbells. I believe I got the entire package for under $500, and almost immediately signed up for the ā€œPlusā€ tier so that I would have 60 days total to get those valuable videos downloaded.

All for nothing. Any time I try to access any video older than about a week, I get one of two error messages - ā€œYour video is processing, please try again laterā€, or ā€œThis eventā€™s video has expired or been deletedā€.

If things continue in their current state, I feel Iā€™ve wasted good money on a system that does not perform as advertised. Additionally, Iā€™ve paid an extra $100 for a ā€œserviceā€ that is essentially worthless. I didnā€™t even get 2 weeks to download my videos, much less 60 days. Iā€™ve worked in IT, systems/network admin for close to 30 years. I was a developer before and during that. I did not use the ā€œclear alertsā€ ā€œfeatureā€, so thatā€™s not the source of whatever this issue is, but I can tell you that this is a completely unacceptable way to include this functionality within the application. As soon as I saw the warning, I cringed. Simply seeing that the ā€œfeatureā€ is included in the application, and the way it is coded to delete without the possibility of recoveringā€¦ unacceptable. The fact that itā€™s included in a shipping version of the application? Worse than unacceptable.

I spent the last several decades reading up on any and all ā€œbest practicesā€ that I could find when working as a systems and network admin, and I did the same sort of research when coding. There are simply things that you do not include in a shipping version of the application, unless there are multiple levels of both explanation AND chances to cancel out. Nobody should be given the ability to wipe their entire video recording library for their security system with one command, a swipe. It should be hidden behind a few layers of warnings, some red borders, some flashing lights and sirens.

Better yet, implement a couple of the Microsoft or Amazon Cloud Services/Data Storage, Redundancy and Security Best Practices. Your service will be far more reliable, and capable of handling a simple ā€œCould you restore this for me?ā€ request.

If I had known Ring was going to be this unreliable, I would have been backing up to my (lifetime) 2TB pCloud cloud storage drive, that I picked up on sale for a little over $200. A tad expensive for a hard drive, but one you can reach from anywhere on the net, fully encrypted?

If Ring cannot improve their service and app, I see no reason to recommend it nor use it myself. As it stands, I have slightly over a week of videos to comb through and quickly get them transferred. Since I have been unable to even reach a support person, and was turned instead to the forums, has anyone else ever run into error messages like this? And is Ring so backwards that they truly do not do their own backups, offsite and remote mirroring? There are companies that exist solely to provide these services to corporations, at extremely reasonable rates. Hundreds to thousands of TB, for less than the cost of a 2 person team to handle the task.

It would have been cheaper and more reliable to go CCTV, and upgrade the one I have to something accessable via the internet.

I do have an additional bit of info that may help - Iā€™m hoping that the app is not designed this wayā€¦ NONE of my videos show any indication that they are in a ā€œprocessingā€ state nor that they are deleted. They look exactly like all the recent ones, that I can indeed download. Does this point to (hopefully!) something fixable?

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Iā€™d call customer service. I have 4 indoor cams, 3 outdoor cams and a 2nd gen doorbell pro. I can go back on any of them to 60 days ago and see every event without any issues. You should be able as well. Customer service has different hours of operation depending on where you live due to covid-19.

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I have just one outdoor camera aand for two weeks now I canā€™t view videos. Tried everything. It is rubbish.

I cannot get help with anything either. Ring has my money since April 20, 2021 but I still donā€™t have camera with spotlights and canā€™t get any help from a human.

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Hi neighbors! You can always search for posts about your concerns by using the search feature in the top right-hand corner. You can click the magnifying glass and type in a topic to pull up posts about that topic. This is a great way to find solutions to questions you may have about your Ring devices. Additionally, our support team is always available to help with any questions or concerns as well. You can give our support team a call at one of the numbers available here. Weā€™re taking additional steps to protect our team and help reduce the spread of COVID-19, so this has resulted in longer than normal wait times. If you are outside of the US, please read our response to COVID-19 here to see how to contact support. :slight_smile:

Nothing to do covid i am having very similar issues, now i can suggest a solution that will fix the issue we all experience.
We need to all have local applience dvr to cash the video localy and then sync to the cloud, the direct cloud server is not working well.
Now my app crashes, you need to introduce wp3 for the wifi plus give every device ethernet so we can wire them.
Fire you buisness model designer. Socks.

Ring tech support is pathetic. Spent four days, with the techs trying to prove to them what I already knewā€¦One of my Spotlight cams had shot craps. I dealt with Brett firstā€¦it must have been his first day on the job. He was from Tennessee and totally clueless. Then it was Mariaā€™s turnā€¦she was good. did a lot of troubleshooting with me . Told me how to reset my camera and wait till dark to see if the camera and lights worked. She said if it didnā€™t then she would process a replacement. She sent me an email to respond to after I had a chance to see if it worked at night. Well, that night the camera still didnā€™t work,. I replied to her email that the problem still existedā€¦The email I responded was returned saying Ring doesnā€™t handle tech support via email any longer. WONDERFUL. So I called tech support AGAIN this morning and a NEW tech wanted to go through the same troubleshooting that the first two techs went throughā€¦I told the tech never mind, I was dumping Ring and all of my devices and transitions to Arlo products. He couldnā€™t care less. A hell of a way to treat a customer that has been with them since the company started.