I just found out the Ring Video Doorbell 2 has a $3 monthly subscription fee! This is a deal breaker for me.
Part if a review from Amazon:
Once your trial of ring video recording ends, you can no longer access past events without a paid subscription. That’s not such a big deal until you realize what counts as a “recent event”. If you don’t press the button within about 5 seconds of getting a motion alert, you missed your shot and now it’s a past event. Say the UPS guy comes, presses the doorbell and walks off immediately. Your phone properly notifies you that somebody is at your door, but you’ve got something in your hands, or your phone is in your pocket or any other distraction is going on that takes 5 seconds to finish. By the time you hit the notification banner and go into the app, it will take you to a screen that says you need a paid subscription to see past events. Earlier today I got a notification WHILE holding my phone, clicked it immediately, but the live video loaded slowly and by the time it did load, the “event” was considered done and it took me to the screen saying I needed to pay. I have no problem paying to record everything and be able to pull up events from hours, days or weeks ago, but needing to pay because 5 seconds went by and the app loaded slowly is a rip-off. This is a $200 item which replaces a $5 hardware store doorbell, and the ONE thing it’s supposed to do (show you live video of rings or motion events at your door) doesn’t work about half the time without paying extra. There needs to be about a 30 second window at minimum where you can see what’s going on without having to pay extra.
When I contacted customer service about this, they were friendly and helpful, but ultimately only gave me one extra month free trial, which has since expired and doesn’t fix the problem. This is a product flaw. Be aware that if you want this to work properly, you’re going to need to sign up for an ongoing subscription. To work as advertised, this is really a $200 doorbell with a $30 yearly subscription fee.
