Did you, like me, buy a Ring Alarm system for your home because it offered the most affordable professional 24/7 monitoring around, at just $10 a month or $100 a year? Then I expect you — like me — just got an email stating you’ll now pay twice as much starting the next time you renew.
Here’s the top of the email I received a few hours ago, telling me I’ll pay $20 a month or $200 a year starting in March, which matches the price of the Ring Protect Pro plan that Amazon started selling three years ago. I was previously on Ring Protect Plus:
Price hike.Image: Sean Hollister / The Verge
Price hikes are always annoying, but Ring is still a relatively affordable alarm service, I suppose. The truly infuriating part: Amazon is pretending it responsibly warned grandfathered customers that this was coming.
“This is your reminder that we previously notified you,” reads the first line of Ring’s email to me today. When? I certainly don’t remember ever getting an email telling me about a 100 percent price hike before...
But digging around on the company’s website, I do find an FAQ with an answer: “In September 2021, we sent you email letting you know that your Ring Protect Plus (1st Gen) subscription would be moving to a new plan starting in 2025.”
So, of course, I dig through my email from September 2021, where I find an email from Ring... which states nothing is changing except for the name of my plan.
Seriously, take a look at this portion of an email titled “Important: Your Plan Name Has Changed”:
“Don’t worry, everything else is staying the same.”Image: Ring
Oh, but there’s that little footnote marker. See that number 1 at the very end of the sentence? That leads to a little dark grey section of fine print at the bottom of the email, which states:
“You’ll continue to have access to Ring Protect Plus (1st Gen) until your next subscription renewal after January 1, 2025...”Image: Ring
In fact, looking back through my boring Ring renewal emails each year, every one of them has this fine print at the bottom. Basically, Amazon has been dark patterning its Ring customers for three years. If I hadn’t taken Amazon at its word that nothing was changing, maybe I would have switched to a different alarm system. I guess it’s not too late...
In fact, Ring may have dark patterned some of them again today. Some customers say their email about the price hike began with the words “New name. New features. Same great price,” before going on to describe how either the features or the price were about to significantly change.
I’m pissed because I’m over a barrel. Am I really going to rip and replace my hardwired Ring doorbell? Would I really let my home insurance alarm discount lapse? But I do understand the price hike to some degree. Inflation happens, and grandfathered Ring customers like me have been enjoying the low prices for many years.
Amazon’s Ring didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Original author: Sean Hollister