Amen Jeff! I couldn’t agree more… Not sure how long you’ve had yours but my product used to work great until they started rolloing out all these “New” software features and now even the base software settings have rendered by Ring Doorbell useless. I have all the same issues you do and I will not even consider upgrading or adding any new products. I am tired of this. I get all the vehicle alerts but never someone coming to the door unless they actually ring the bell… I’ve had countless packages delivered and I get no notifications whatsoever until the delivery truck pulls away, “sometimes”. I have the device to thwarte or at least view package theives but this is now even useless for that… with or without the people only settings all I get are passing vehicles and blowing tree branches (Which are above the motion detection area, explain that one to me)… I mentioned it used to be great and I loved it and it’s been mounted in the same place without being moved or changed so this the problem is almost certainly software related. I am looking into a Nest or another brand for a replacement. This is certainly not worth the $30 a year.
@Jeff622 wrote:
Here’s my list of constant issues:
**Ring Doorbell: **
My house faces a somewhat busy street and no matter what motion setting I use, it constantly just alerts me to almost every single movement and sometimes no movement at all. I can walk up the stairs to my front door and the alert won’t go off until I’m 12 inches from the doorbell. This is my 2nd device because I returned the first one that did the exact same thing. I already spent 1.5 hours on the phone with support and did everything to troubleshoot it to no avail. It simply does not work as its supposed to. I’ve adjust every setting at least 50 times.
There’s a nifty new PEOPLE ONLY feature which is complete BS. Just about every car that passes by activates the camera. Why is this even a feature if it’s activating the device when a leaf blows down the street?
My internet is solid and have the best router Verizon offers, have a great signal and have reinstalled the app and reset all the settings multiple times. I’ve installed a wedge and tried every setting imaginable. I love how when setting it up it asks if I live facing a street and asks how far the door is from the street; 5 to 15 feet, 15 to 30 feet or 30 feet or more. What difference does it make? PEOPLE ONLY means it’ll only activate for a human being, right? Nope. The wind blows and I’m getting an alert there’s motion at my front door.
Battery Spotlight Camera
I’m so sorry I bought this thing. This has got to be worst piece of electronics I ever owned. This thing deserves to be swatted down with a baseball bat and put out of its misery.
Only sometimes will the LIVE VIEW actually activate. It’s got a strong WiFi signal and I can be sitting three inches from my router and it just refuses to activate. Sometimes it does and I’m thankful and celebrate that Ring actually made something work some of the time.
I read somewhere some people have to turn off their Bluetooth setting to get it to activate. That doesn’t work for me at all and to be honest I wouldn’t do that anyway because it’s 2020 and that’s not the way things should work these days.
I dread changing the batteries in this thing - simply dread it. Although it’s easy enough it just gives multiple problems after the new batteries are installed. The first time I changed them the battery indicator showed I still had the old battery installed. It was very convenient to reinstall the app and reset the network setting before it finally showed up.
The second time I changed them the app told me for an hour straight that the spotlight’s door was open when it clearly was not. Again, it was awesome to reinstall the app and the settings just to make that bogus message go away.
I just changed them again today. This time the camera preview on the dashboard was blank for about an hour. That was great. I can’t wait to see what goes wrong the next time I change them out. I just can’t wait.
I’ll say it again…so sorry I ever spent the money on these products in the first place. I spent a lot of money for security for my home that don’t even do what they’re expected to do. It’s like having 1985’s technology for a home security system in 2020.
If I had the option I would tear down everything, throw it in a box and send it back to Ring and never look back. I’ll tolerate as long as I can, but I can see the baseball bat coming out in the near future. The only thing that Ring has gotten right so far was billing me. That department doesn’t seem to have any issues, but their R&D department needs to clean out their desks and go find a job that they might be good at.
If anyone from Ring reads this, please by all means, share my thoughts at your next round table pow wow. I’d love to hear what Jamie S. has to say.