Ring Video Doorbell Customers Angry At 43% Price Hike (bbc.co.uk) 42
Longtime Slashdot reader Alain Williams shares a report from the BBC: Users of Ring video doorbells have reacted angrily to a huge price hike being introduced in March. After buying the devices, customers can pay a subscription to store footage on the cloud, download clips and get discounted products. That subscription is going up 43%, from $44 to $63 per device, per year, for basic plan customers. The firm, which is owned by Amazon, insisted it still provided "some of the best value in the industry." Its customers appear not to to agree.
"In case anything happens..." (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"In case anything happens..." (Score:5, Funny)
Strange game. The only way to win is not to pay.
Pray I do not alter it any further (Score:5, Insightful)
You were the ones who signed up for the creepy always spying camera that lets the cops just shuffle through your videos without a warrant. What did you think was going to happen? I know, you didn't think.
Re:Pray I do not alter it any further (Score:4, Funny)
And you will wear these clown shoes and refer to yourself as "Mary."
PoE cameras + NAS (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
Store to my local NAS. No ongoing subscription. I won't buy devices that can't be used except with a subscription, or that allow the seller to brick them at will.
>Store to my local NAS
I did the the same but subscribed to a $5/month vm to store the footage /s
I am just kidding, my house cameras store the footage in my office building and vice-versa.
"Store to my local NAS" doesn't seem really clever to me.
Re: PoE cameras + NAS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: PoE cameras + NAS (Score:2)
He's not claiming to be clever but he actually is: he's saving on cost. Besides his NAS could be replicating to another appliance buried in his backyard.
Re: (Score:3)
Yep. Beyond that, I block them at my firewall and pass them through a Home Assistant instance so only data I want to get to the Internet gets out and they can't call home to the manufacturer.
And if you set up motion alarms and image snapshots, you can have them forward to a secondary site so even if someone rips your hardware out, you still get a picture of them.
Re: (Score:2)
This is why (well that and overreaching surveillance) why I bought a group of PoE cameras that work with a wide variety of platforms. Store to my local NAS. No ongoing subscription. I won't buy devices that can't be used except with a subscription, or that allow the seller to brick them at will.
Exactly. The second you buy hardware that locks you to a cloud service provider, you're at their mercy, and they can do anything they want, and all you can do is junk the hardware. You pay more up front, because you have to buy an NVR or whatever to store the video somewhere, but everything is under your control.
Re: (Score:2)
Is there a good wireless one with online remote access without subscriptions?
Re: (Score:2)
Simple solution (Score:5, Informative)
Drop Ring. Don't renew. It's that simple.
The only way to get a company's attention is to have its revenue and profits plunge. If a company goes out of business as a result, so be it. It's about sending a message.
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Informative)
In this case the company is Amazon. They could discontinue Ring entirely and it would hardly be a blip on their balance sheets.
I'm not sure where the article is getting 43% from. The subscription is going up by $1/mo, from $3.99 to $4.99; that's not a 43% increase. At the end of the day, it comes down to if you feel your time spent replacing your doorbell with an alternate product is worth the savings.
Re: (Score:2)
If people stopped buying from Amazon, they'd take note. But because it's so simple to do it won't be done.
Re: (Score:3)
This is the second 40% + increase from ring in 2 years for the basic product.
June 2022 they increased from £2.49pm to £3.49pm (40.16%)
March 2024 increased from £3.49pm to £4.99pm (42.97%)
Re: (Score:1)
I'm not sure where the article is getting 43% from. The subscription is going up by $1/mo, from $3.99 to $4.99; that's not a 43% increase.
Math is hard.
You would be correct if you only paid for one month. The thing is the scummy subscription has 12 months.
Re: (Score:2)
You would be correct if you only paid for one month.
And you'd be correct if Amazon didn't offer a month-to-month subscription option, but they do. That's going up by 25%.
Re: Simple solution (Score:1)
Sunk Cost Fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Cancel it. Your hardware wasn't an investment, that's a sunk cost fallacy. There are lots of alternatives. Move on.
That is why cloud services suck ... (Score:3)
This is the real reason that will resonate with 'regular' people and let them know why cloud services suck. ...
Privacy, lock-in, and all that don't register with free/open software enthusiasts.
But price hikes that you can do nothing about will
I Switched to Eufy When Ring Enshittified (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: I Switched to Eufy When Ring Enshittified (Score:2)
Yup, When I looked at ring and the subscription, then compared to Eufy, it was a no brainer. The newer cameras have onboard memory to offload some storage from the Homebase.
Cancelled my plan...dumping the devices (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Wyze isn't any better. They keep increasing their Cam Plus prices. Among other issues.
My cameras will randomly not be recognized as having Cam Plus subscription (not the Lite tier) and so it won't continuously record most events to the cloud. I do have samsung pro endurance microSD cards in the cameras, so I won't miss anything, however the app does take a long time to connect to cameras in order to playback the recorded video.
Going on two years now unfortunately the cameras will have gaps in video recordin
Not the first time (Score:3)
I left Ring a year or two ago because they did a 25% rate hike. I also was mainly using it to prove Amazon wasn't delivering my packages... and then I realized there is a conflict of interest, there. I wonder how many people accepted the rate hike so Amazon can continue being lazy-asses about proper package delivery?
I didn't care about face-eating leopards (Score:3)
Until one ate MY face.
Don't (Score:3)
Ubiquiti (Score:3)
greedy exploitation of walled gardens (Score:2)
I have Ring (Score:2)
The Basic Plan is a trap for people who probably shouldn't be buying a non-homebrew camera set up.
Duh! (Score:4, Insightful)
And the enshitification continues (Score:2)
N/M
Business model (Score:4, Informative)
What an amazing business model. Actually have people PAY for a lack of privacy.
no sympathy (Score:3)
No sympathy from me. If you rely on something that has to go via the mother ship to do pretty much anything, you owe your soul to the mother ship.
Doesn't make financial sense (Score:3)
It didn't make any sense whatsoever. I have over 5TB hard drive space. Apple offers 200 GB cloud space for £1.99 a month. My iPhone where their app was on has a few dozen GB free space. Why on Earth would I spend lots of money for storage for my door bell? It doesn't make any sense.
where is the FTC (Score:3)
if I want the cops to access my video's (Score:2)