Yep. My blog. I can say whatever I want. The Ring Doorbell platform is a piece of fucking shit.
I had a Ring Doorbell for a couple of years and it would intermittently die, would not connect to a live stream if I got a notification and would die for days only to come back to life mysteriously.
So brilliant guy I am I bought another one to replace it. A Ring Doorbell Pro. It is two wires and an app connection yet somehow it took me two hours to install and I’m a geek.
It’s a piece of fucking shit. When it did finally install after I found an obscure reference in their forum that said to turn off cellular data on the phone while installing it was hit or miss on live view.
I got a hair emotional when I wrote this😃. I’ve edited to add a fact or two but my review stands mostly as is.
So……..anyway, the doorbell WILL NOT INSTALL. It seems like it is going to install and then it throws me to this screen on the app where YOU ARE STUCK.
Fuck Your App, Ring
Then when I would shut down the app and reopen it……..MY FUCKING CAMERA SEEMED TO BE INSTALLED………WELL EXCEPT FOR THE FACT YOU COULDN’T CONNECT TO IT.
Then……..you couldn’t delete the damn thing. Spin, spin, spin goes the activity ball on the screen. Very fucking entertaining.
So again I find a reference in the support forums that basically says “Our shit might not install if your cellular data is activated on your phone”. Holy mother of fuck. Why would I want my cellular data enabled on my phone? Oh Dopey Me.
So I shut it down and reset the (piece of fucking shit) doorbell for maybe the 15th time and Whoa be unto me……..it installs. At this point I can’t believe it. And then I click on “Live View” and……………..FUCKING NOTHING. “Cannot Connect”. It’s the fault of your network it says.
Horse Fucking Shit.
Then buried in the forums it says to turn your wifi off. First turn off your cellular……..now turn off the wifi. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
Fuck Ring and their fucking app.
Oddly enough the web interface seems to work just fine but get this, there is no Live View on the web interface. Just video from 2 minutes ago of the terrorists breaking in and killing you while you wait for a doorbell notification that isn’t forthcoming.
Fuck Ring.
So basically my old Ring and new one are roughly the same model. I took the old one apart and I’m going to fix it. What happens is they have a non removable battery in them that is buried under the motherboard. Once this battery goes bad, the Ring is dead. Period. End of Story. During it’s death throes your Ring will die and then maybe the 18 volts from your doorbell transformer will give it a sip of power enough for it to come back to life. Anyway, know that this style of Ring Doorbell has a finite life span on it based on a battery you cannot change.
Ring Engineers and their product designed to fail
The battery does have a little heater pad glued to it. That way it’ll stay nice and warm while it’s fucking dead.
Oh and by the way……THE FUCKING BATTERY IS ALL FAT AND SWOLLEN UP. GEE NO FIRE HAZARD HERE 🙄.
Well, Hello You Fat Little Bastard
Just like poking a dead possum with a stick.
Fire Department Fire Investigator: “I found the cause of the fire. Dumb ass bought a Ring”.
That was kind of a joke but just a minute ago I googled “ring doorbell fire” and get this: Ring issued a recall for 350,000 devices because, hey, the batteries might catch on fire. The linked article is dated Nov 11th, 2020.
I have Reolink Cameras THAT JUST FUCKING WORK. 24/7. No bullshit. Ring doorbells are horse fucking no good pieces of shit. The engineers at Ring should kill themselves.
As long as I live I will never own another fucking Ring Doorbell. They also don’t play that nice with Open Source Home Automation. Well, they did, and now they don’t.
Fuck Ring.
Wait, let me grab my phone and see if it will Live View. Nope. Wait. I turned off the WiFi and now it’s Live Viewing. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME. All this thing is good for is recording your death.
Fuck Ring.
But how do you really feel about the Ring DoorBell Pro? 🙂
Same issues as you, want to take a hammer to it
Well don’t run out and buy SimpliSafe because they’re just as fuckin shity their cameras don’t work worth a damn their doorbell sucks as bad as ring you call them and they want to argue with you and talk to you like you’re stupid and tell you to do this and do that and you tell him well that’s what you told me the last 15 times I called all these damn companies that come up with this crap from China it ain’t worth a shit I paid over $500 for my security system with them and it works half-ass and I’ll never buy anything else from them and now that I’ve read this I will not buy a ring system I’ll find something and rig it up myself but if I’m home my security system is a double barrel shotgun
Need a bigger hammer. Or .357
So, if I understand correctly, you DON’T like Ring doorbells?
My ring cameras don’t record ANYTHING OF USE! Paying almost $100 a year for a shitty device! It constantly records when my dogs go in and out in and out but does it record when my dogs are fighting and I rush outside to stop the said fight?! NOPE! Also, there was a suspicious car in front of my kids window one day and the person inside was just staring at our house. Then they did some weird gesture with their hands while we stared back, but does the ring doorbell catch it?! HELL TO THE FUCKING NO!
Agreed
Just to ask for a $25.00 credit because my camera NEVER WORKED IS IMPOSSIBLE
I didn’t think anybody could explain it better than me, but you nailed it. A piece of fucking shit, right out of the box. I couldn’t have said it better!
I agree with you. I had mine a little over a month and it was offline more than it was online. It went back to Home DePot. I had the Ring2 and I wanted to upgrade.
Agree. My husband and I hired someone finally…they couldn’t get it to work.
True garbage.
Very unreliable.
After we get killed there will be no footage of the scum
breaking in.
What a piece of pig turd.
I have had connection issue from the beginning and had issues with delay. I have a true passthrough router and it is literally 4 feet away from the doorbell with no impedance to factor down bandwidth via airwave blockages, and it is still total crap.
NO JOKE! I have been boarding on forums all over the place to hopefully warn others of this marketing BS.
So with that said,
I am thankful to you John for your post to try and get the word out to protect others, so they will not buy into this Ring product and waste their money.
Especially when it comes to their home security, which can literally save lives if the promised system works in tangent with true ability to perform at that peak moment.
And RING DOES NOT DO THAT.
Totally agree. same happened to my video doorbell pro after 1 year. stopped connecting to wifi, no amount of hard reset or whatever changed that, something has died inside and Ring dont wanna know fo course becuase I am just outside my warranty. Fucking piece of shit indeed
Same with me. No wifi. (I suspect the wifi “chip” died.) I was a bit luckier than you, though. Mine lasted about 3 1/2 years.
Ditto , it works just well enough to suck you into wasting a great deal of time hoping that it will finally work. Remove it stomp on it and throw it away , waste of money lesson learned.
I had nothing but problems with it. Finally try to fix it… it tells me I cannot access the app since I changed my phone so now I have to call them. Their rep tells me to read the serial number whcih means I need to unscrew this stupid thing off the wall and rhey used those stupid screws for which you need a funny bit. Their rep tells me they need to verify physicall possession… she starts talking about my utility bill??? Wtf? It is a stupid doorbell ring??? i just need it to ring everytime someone presses the button. Fuck them.
New house. Connected fine. One day later disconnected. Tells me to reboot wifi. It’s obviously my fault. I used the same words as the review, before I even read it.. I plan to remove it and cerimonially process it with sledge hammer. Complete crap.
Yes agree. Ring a is bullshit smart door bell. They force us to pay for service, otherwise it is useless. Without paying we are not allowed to even use the camera since it is very slow to view. If you want to know who ring the bell, they already gone when the Ring let you view. What the shit is that!
This is the most accurate review I’ve ever read in my life and funny as anything I heard in quite awhile. In fact the reviewer should get an Emmy! That said ring is a piece of dog turd all wrapped up in dead pig entrails! As far as Ring is concerned we should all ban together and start a lawsuit to sue them for false advertising!
John, you a Marine? I am, former, and your review would have come straight out of the mouth of a Marine. Well done Sir! I agree with your review. What I need to know now is, which doorbell camera works the best? Thanks and keep up the good work.
MW
Mark,
I am NOT a Marine but was a Squid for 6 years. I was however embedded with Marines for the last 15 or more years in Civil Service and deployed with them to all the fun places as a Tech Rep in Expeditionary Airfields. So maybe some of that rubbed off on me 🙂
I use a Reolink camera pointed at the front door these days and don’t use a specific doorbell cam. One reason is that the new house I moved to isn’t wired for a doorbell in the first place.
I came here to say I have 3 ring cameras and I didn’t bother installing the 4th. Ring is fucking TRASH. I just deleted the app. Fuck ring
AVOID RING AVOID RING CAMERAS
OVERPRICED TRASH
I have a ring camera that does not work in winter, keeps unlinking, and now they want to charge for what used to be free, so I have said FUCK THIS! These cameras are just toys, if you were to rely on this equipment for your safety you would be out of luck. There needs to be something people can do to fight back against this kind of rip off . I want a refund for this piece of shit but I know that will never happen. These criminal dirt bags are smiling somewhere aren’t they? I will tell everybody I can to stay away from this scam and go get yourself a real hardwired professional security cam.
I have one of these pieces of crap cost me 60 quid. its a shame there’s no address at “Ring” to send fecal parcels to. The app apparently wont work on my sony phone, would have been nice to know that before paying the cash. Also its a pain on many other levels like it needs to be a doorbell at least. How the TV cunts get away with advertising a fraud like this who knows.
I agree. Ring Pro is total garbage. I get pissed at the fact that it will NEVER FUCKING CONNECT when someone rings the bell. I have a driveway cam and have to use that to talk with anyone that approaches the door or rings the bell because the ring doorbell doesn’t do shit, but attempt to connect.
We had an incident where our kids bikes were in the front yard, right in front of the camera, when they were stolen. Did the camera get the footage of the piece of shit stealing them? Fuck no. In one frame, perfect footage of the bikes. Next frame nada. Everything was captured EXCEPT the bikes being stolen! We had several other issues like this. In fact, burglars, if you see a ring cam, have no worries, it won’t capture shit, lol.
Bottom line… stay away from this piece of fucking shit. Fuck you, Ring.
And yes, I’ve talked to ring technical support many times and even have a wifi 6 upgrade with close proximity. It’s Ring.
Thanks for the blog, John!
Yep, bought it and regret it. Never see who has been most times, out of focus when someone goes past and cars and ppl never appeared on playback. Need a real door cam like they have in USA
I installed one of Ring doorbells for my partners 87 year old mum and dad. They live 140 miles away from us. The doorbell died after 10 weeks, during this time it never worked properly at all. I really don’t want to
go into detail about the trouble caused and the personal cost of trying to set up and remedy the problems of this defective garbage, because it depresses me too much. This product really should not be on the market!
Agree waste of money
Your review is a couple of years old, but much of it is still relevant. I’m only posting right now to tell you that I really enjoyed your review. I laughed out loud at a couple of points. Thanks for that because, without it, I might be smashing our Ring doorbell to pieces with a hammer right now. I’m calm enough now to wait until we have a replacement (from another company).
This is relevant still. Not only does this fucking company not want to talk to any customers but the ring bell doesn’t work. Today it captured me going downstairs to collect neighbours parcel but didn’t capture me properly coming back. The video has been speded up so much i was a shadow. I’ve been trying to keep the shit neighbours out of my flat and their crappy mates. this is the second security system that didn’t work and I’m not sure if there’s interference with the system! I had to get screwdriver and bit separately because they weren’t in the pack, I had to get the battery for the cam corder because it was not in the pack and I have had to go round in circles to get the bloody thing working anyway. I wonder if it depends who you’re trying to keep out, maybe you too have been unlucky with neighbours that don’t want you to secure your place too
You would think someone would come out with a camera system that worked! I have some TP-Link cameras with pan and tilt, they never die, and they cost $25 each! The app always works! They’re just not for outside. I have $500 worth of Ring crap that hardly ever works, I pay $100 a year to be able to look at videos! Surely some company can do what Ring is supposed to do, right? I mean, it’s not rocket science! I have been more frustrated with Ring than any other company except maybe Apple! Pure shit company!
I use Reolink Cameras. They are locally controlled and you can stream them 24/7 to your own server (provided you have enough space). Their app works and records sound as well. They can be powered over PoE. As best as I know they are relatively secure and putting them on a separate VLAN is the way to go in my opinion.
So true. And my ‘favorite’ part about Ring is how it’s always your home Wifi’s fault. I have enterprise-class WiFi at my home with literally dozens of client devices and they do just fine. But the Ring devices are always having signal issues. An obvious case of rushing mediocre (at best) products to market with no regard for testing.
When the ring door bell works its good but now I can’t connect to my network but have a strong signal. Sounds like my ring caught the Ring POFS disease. Any help of what size hammer to use.
I totally agree with your reviews–all of them. Hate the frustration with trying to get it to connect to Wifi–I follow each direction to no success. They blame us for all the troubles of the Ring. Wish I had not bought in the first place which was to get pics of my trespassing neighbor for the police.
I firmly believe they oversold this crap and don’t have the capacity to maintain it. They’ve made their money , so fuck the customer. I hope the next trip to space, Bezo doesn’t come back with his Amazon shit.
Yes I agree. RING SUCKS. MANY REASONS. BOTTOM line is they are rip off artists. All they want is for you to subscribe to their service. Bull ship on ring . Never again will I buy a ring product.
Installed a ring doorbell pro, it worked for 2 hours and then for whatever reason, would not connect to the router. Screwed with it for two days and never got it to connect. I sent it back and they gave me half my money back.
The two spotlight cams and one of the stick up cam I got have been working good for two weeks now. I sent one of the stick up cams back because the mic must have been bad – all I could hear was static.
Ring gets only a 1/2 (half) a star from me.
1. After 6 months the doorbell chime stopped working.
2. Purchased a chime Pro worked for 3 months, stopped working, will not pair, they say the problem is with my Internet provider. (Rubbish have removed chime.
3. Camera and video work OK, no problems.
4. Purchased some Phonak hearing aids, the audiologist paired them with the doorbell, that works OK all of the time.
5. An expensive doorbell with fuction complications that cannot be corrected.
6. Would I buy another RING Doorbell – No
I don’t blame you. My experience with Ring Video Doorbell Pro has been a nightmare. This is because the Pro is an absolutely piece of shit. The regular Ring Video Doorbell is just fine, and we use the original 1st gen one at work and I have one at home. But this Pro version… sucks ass.
First you have to hook up this capacitor/battery pack (I assume it’s the former) to your doorbell, which is a huge oversight of the design. You don’t need to do this with a regular Ring video doorbell. I had a Pro model at a rental property get stuck in the flashing blue LED for days while trying to connect it to my network and Ring account through the Ring app. So I contacted support (overseas of course) and they sent me out a replacement. The replacement worked fine the first day. Came back to the property a few days later and it stopped working, would only ‘ring’ once every 5-10 presses of the button, and NEVER send ring events to my app or smart fridge. Meanwhile the wi-fi network and all other devices are working just fine.
I’m going back to a regular Ring video doorbell instead of the Pro/Plus/whatever crap that needs the extra capacitor/battery pack connected to your doorbell.
I realize this is years later, but I just got a Ring 10 days ago and it just mysteriously fucking died for no god damn reason. SPent two hours trying to bring it back to life but nope. Fuck RIng and their cheap-ass product, I’ll just put bear traps outside instead.
Which reolink do you recommend? I’m looking at the site but I know nothing about this kind of stuff.