Are you like me and purchased a Ring alarm system for your home because it offers the cheapest professional 24/7 monitoring available at just $10 per month or $100 per year? Then I expect that, like me, you just received an email telling you that you will be paying twice as much from the next renewal.
Here is the beginning of the email I received a few hours ago telling me that starting in March I will be paying $20 per month or $200 per year, which is the price of the Ring Protect Pro Plans that Amazon started selling three years ago. I have previously used Ring Protect Plus:
Price increases are always annoying, but Ring is still a relatively affordable alarm service in my opinion. The really annoying part: Amazon acts like it responsibly warned its grandfathered customers that this was coming.
“This is your reminder that we notified you before.” reads the first line of Ring's email to me today. When? I certainly can't remember ever receiving an email telling me about a 100% price increase before…
But when I poked around on the company's website, I actually found an FAQ with an answer: “In September 2021, We have notified you via email that your Ring Protect Plus (1st Generation) subscription will be transitioned 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 says Nothing changes except the name of my plan.
Seriously, take a look at this part of an email titled “Important: Your plan name has changed”:
Oh, but there's that little footnote marker. Do you see the number 1 at the very end of the sentence? This results in a small dark gray fine print at the bottom of the email that says:
When I look back at my boring ring renewal emails every year, I notice that there is this fine print at the bottom of every email. Essentially, Amazon has been keeping its Ring customers in the dark for three years. If I hadn't taken Amazon at its word that nothing would change, I might have switched to a different alarm system. I guess it's not too late…
In fact, Ring may have re-dark patterned some of them today. Some customers say their email about the price increase began with the words “New name. New features. Same great price,” before describing how either the features or price would change significantly.
I'm mad because I'm over a barrel. Am I really going to disassemble and replace my hardwired Ring doorbell? Would I really let my home insurance alert discount expire? But I understand the price increase to a certain extent. Inflation occurs, and grandfatherly Ring customers like myself have enjoyed the low prices for many years.
Amazon's Ring did not immediately respond to a request for comment.