Micro Transaction Overload, Doorbell Subscription Service?! Proof we live in a Mandela Reality.

[Shadowprophet]

Okay, the title is over the top, once we can move on from that, have you ever thought about microtransactions? at first, it was really simple because only the truly unnecessary items were microtransactions, like a movie or a game DLC. but later, once people became more accepting of these tiny fees, then, it was streaming services, and then they began forcing monthly fees to use software that originally you could just buy for a one-time fee.. but now you have to subscribe to this software, and pay a monthly fee, it's like a whole microtransaction economy has emerged to nickel and dime us into oblivion..


So, the wife was watching some movie and randomly decided we needed cameras and video doorbells and motion detection lighting the whole home security nine yards thing. Since I'm a gadgets and gizmos kind of guy I'm like cool, amazon the stuff and I'll set it all up.

The stuff comes in I hook it up, and surprise fee. The Binks doorbells require a monthly subscription fee.....




I have to pay to use the doorbells I already paid for.. have you ever thought about how much money you spend monthly on little bitty BS fees?.. I have, especially lately..... it's not the money of it,, its nickles and dimes.... it's the principle that a man shouldn't have to drop a quarter into his doorbell every time someone rings it... metaphorically, that's what it is....

 

[pigfarmer]

Yup. Most if not all manufacturers reserve cloud based recording for doorbells as it's their most popular item and they want you to sign on for more more more. What's more insidious is when they throw in a free one year subscription you fail to understand and then one day nothing works. Heard that many times.

I use Wyze v3 cameras with added a microSD cards for local recording that don't need cloud services. I bought one of their floodlight cameras and while it's a very nice unit it treats its videos differently than it's standalone v3 peers even with an added microSD. It only records very short video snippets locally, if I want full video I have to pay, which I don't. Actually, the other v3s only record 12 second 'motion events' but they're still making more video available to me than the floodlight cam does.

IIRC Blink will sell you a gadget for local storage and it may capture a doorbell stream. Don't remember. Blink is - or was anyway - one of those that will not record during the period you are watching the camera live. Kind of stupid, right ? You want to see who is at the door and what if he does something while you're watching? Maybe wave his junk and guess what, it wasn't recorded.