The cool thing is, if you're the right Amazon employee, you can log in and literally _see_ the anger on their faces next time they go in the front door.[1]

[1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/amazon-to-pay-58-million-for-spyi...

Just like they can see the anger on my face any time I can't avoid going near one of these things.

Yup, Still glad I canceled my prime membership. Next, the doorbell videos will have ads that you can pay more for to remove.

How about an ad when you ring the doorbell and only after watching/hearing it will the occupants get notified.

Yes you could install a credit card reader on the doorbell and shame the owners by alerting their visitors to the fact that they've not paid the bill, but informing them that they can ring the bell for a minimal yearly subscription.

Can I make the doorbell reorder laundry detergent for me too?

I don't see why not.

They should change the doorbell noise to “cha-ching”.

Company has recurring expenses to keep your cloud-connected device running. They need recurring revenue to cover those costs. Depending on one-time revenue from the sale of new devices to cover the recurring expenses of existing devices is a pyramid scheme, no?

I have an IoT graveyard of devices from companies that did not charge a monthly fee and went under (Edyn garden sensor, Automatic car monitor, etc).

Didn’t they recently close access to law enforcement? Perhaps they lost a revenue stream and now need to make up for it.

We have Nest cameras, and the basic 30 day recording service is $80/year (though we have 2 doorbell cameras and 6 other cameras around the property) so for us its a good value, and $60/device under ring would be crazy. But if you have just the doorbell , then the Ring was and is the better value over Nest.

wont be renewing personally, but I also got a few pies and cameras and a NAS. There really was never a need for them in the first place.

but you can just configure it to store the data on your own computer on your home network, right?

I’m not familiar with Ring, but if it’s anything like their Blink cameras I wouldn’t count on it. The Blink cameras advertise a local only mode, but the functionality is reduced to make it unusable. You lose thumbnails for videos and they take away the ability to bulk delete (IIRC). Have fun navigating into every video, waiting for it to start playing, and then deleting it.

The other catch is if “the cloud” is needed to generate thumbnails, it’s not a local only mode.

nope. not even your own ringtone for their chimes. No control whatsoever

I'll just leave this here ... https://www.do-it-yourself-help.com/doorbell-wiring-diagrams