Blink doorbell and sync hub. Free forever?

jeffy22

Hi

I bought my blink doorbell and sync 2 hubas i assumed i would never need a subscription like the  ring doorbell. 
All was good for 6 months but now I've had an email telling me my blink subscription plan is nearly over. 

I assumed because i bought the sync hub that FOREVER i would never need to pay a subscription. 
Right now everytime the doorbell notices movement i get a 10 second clip to my phone and if some one rings the doorbell i get a ring in my phone.

All these are stored as clips in the ring doorbell app on my phone. 
I can also live watch the doorbell through my phone. 


I assumed this is what i was paying for when i bought the sync 2 hub. 


So is this email I've had just trying to get me to pay more?
Or was out all as scam and I'm going to lose the ability to save movement clips to my phone ( which is why i bought the doorbell!!)

DullGreyGuy

jeffy22 said:
I assumed because i bought the sync hub that FOREVER i would never need to pay a subscription. 

That was never realistic, there is a cost for them to provide this and its unrealistic to assume they will be able to sell new hardware in perpetuity to be able to offer the service for free to those who last bought hardware 20 years ago.

Some companies go bust because their terms were poorly written and customer were entitled forever and others were better written and exercise their right to terminate products (or equiv) and only offer reactivation via a subscription service.

In time they may find they can sell your video data for enough to make it possible to offer the service of free but most similar ideas have been well intentioned but unrealistic in practice. A black box company would give free boxes to any insurer wanting to offer blackbox insurance but it was because they believed the government would change road tax to a per mile basis in which case being the most installed blackbox could make a great advantage (short of having a Conservative share holder)

chrisw

The subscription is to store the footage on their cloud. You can plug a usb stick into the sync module and it will store the footage on that instead. 

It just means there is no cloud storage backup which isn't really much of an issue tbh. 

[Deleted User]

You don’t need a subscription if you have the sync2 device and USB storage. 

You are mistaken to think the footage is stored on your phone app though, it is either stored in the cloud or the sync 2 device. 

jeffy22

Thank you everyone.  Do I need a special usb stick or will any old one work?

bob_a_builder

I seem to recall seeing a YT video that said you would lose the picture preview icon in the clips list in the app after the 1 year free trial
Although that was the Blink cameras rather than Doorbell - but same Blink app no doubt

EDIT : Here is a link to the video which explains exactly what you lose once trial runs out 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akSBK5Girts 

ju5tanam3

mine has just run out, i bought a 128gb stick for storage and everything carries on as normal except there is now a delay in retrieving the clips, as " USB clips take a little longer to load". as someone said there is no picture preview now either. these just little niggles that Amazon think will make you subscribe.

D24E25

The other downside is that if you are burgled without the subscription and the thieves find your Sync unit and remove the USB, you have no video evidence of who approached your front door.  

EssexExile

I'm glad I've had Blink since it first came out, I don't pay any subscription and still have full functionality. They even gave me a free camera when I posted a critical review of it's performance. The free camera is no better than the old one but now I have them front and back!

TryingToWork

At my old property, I used the Alfred camera app on a phone fixed to the back of my door's peephole. That was paid, but only £30 a year, instead of over £100. It saved motion clips in the cloud. Or you could record live from your "webviewer" device. It's great value for money. I still have the Alfred app, but don't have parcels delivered when I'm not in anymore, so I now only use it indoors when I go away. 

bob_a_builder

ju5tanam3 said:

mine has just run out, i bought a 128gb stick for storage and everything carries on as normal except there is now a delay in retrieving the clips, as " USB clips take a little longer to load". as someone said there is no picture preview now either. these just little niggles that Amazon think will make you subscribe.

Can't help thinking that the " USB clips take a little longer to load".  issue has been engineered in to encourage subscription 

My Wyze cams on same network record to both local SD card and the cloud - yet there is no difference in speed between the 2 methods of accessing the videos - No subscription either !