Our Ring doorbell has just been stolen

[BellissimoGecko]

We left the house at 3am to take dd to airport. Five minutes later the doorbell was stolen. But the odd thing was, there was no footage of the thief. How???

Just reported to police.

Ffs. Does this mean they were watching us leave the house?! Will they come back to burgle us??

Yeah but either way the OP already said that the pad was used instead of the screws and she had already read up on it. Lots of people have actually bothered to give her sound advice and yet you’re still trying to push the point to no end. It makes no odds now and doesn’t help with the situation at hand. You just keep arguing for the sake of it and making digs for various different reasons unnecessarily. Just give it a rest.

OP posted that she messaged the neighbours at 7.54. She may have messaged them at 7.30. I wouldn't care when my neighbours messaged me. My phone is on silent and I'd read it when I woke up.

So the camera was taken but your house wasn't burgled at the time? I would've thought that would be the point of taking it. In any case I would get something sorted today and wouldn't leave the house empty if possible.

Seems totally plausible to me. If you're a moderately lazy electrician who fits loads of ring doorbells and can't be arsed with drilling and screwing you'd buy a supply of sticky pads to use.

Sorry OP was sorting DC for school. No they were not burgled but i believe a car opposite was stolen.

lol I didn’t read it properly I thought she’d gone to the airport (away)
without recordings you wouldn’t know
but yeah make sense she came back and saw it gone 😂 soz OP. My bad 😅

Many years ago (1990s), a Geordie friend said there was a craze in Toon Town for scrotes nicking car alarms.

A decent security system should squeal if it loses it's WiFi.

Did they necessarily do it because you left? It may be that they intended to steal it on the basis that you would all be asleep and unlikely to hear anything. If it's only attached by a sticky pad it wouldn't make much noise.

OP can get it replaced by Ring anyway, so no need to go after anyone else.

This sort of stuff is why we don't rely on the recording bit of ours - we're so close to a main road that the motion detection on it is flaky anyway however we set the zones up, so we don't have the recording subscribed - it's just used to see who is ringing at the door and to sound via the Alexas so you can actually hear it throughout the house.

Sorry yours has been nicked OP - MN likes grand conspiracies but sometimes people just nick any shit that's not nailed down because they bloody well can!

What a horrible thing to happen. I hope the replacement comes soon. It might have been done because they were or are planning to commit a crime in your area and want to make sure no one can see them, but if they can already wifi jam it, I don't see why they'd need to steal the doorbell (maybe I'm being naive). Maybe it was just local kids/the yoof testing out a wifi jamming app or something to see what they could get away with? Hopefully nothing sinister comes of it all!

I would make sure you look active as a family for a few days. Maybe get a friend to come round with a big suitcase, have a few people visiting with dogs so observers think you have dogs there. If you're out, have noise still on etc.

Is it possible it was removed by a neighbour who found it intrusive and waited until you all went out ?

The idea of someone lurking around at 3 o'clock in the morning to steal a ring doorbell seems a bit far fetched to me. What are they worth second hand ? 50 quid ?

It's a good idea to have multiple cameras that use different means of recording. As as been said above, wifi cameras can be jammed easily enough. Even if they don't get jammed there is often a break between recordings. And wifi isn't reliable anyway - coverage often briefly drops without you noticing it during normal use, routers restart themselves sometimes.

Wifi cameras do have a part to play in home defence, they are convenient and battery-powered ones can be placed very discreetly. But you also need an alternative system, preferably one that records 24/7 that can operate without wifi. At a pinch a dashcam does an acceptable job, get one that just overwrites the oldest data when the memory is full and then you will always have a backup of the last 24 hours or so (whatever fits in the memory).

My daughter lives in Birmingham in a street that has ring doorbells that is repeatedly burgled with no footage
Police say the burglars have a device that can switch the doorbell off and in fact there are huge gaps in the recordings all along the street

The car thieves that clone (or whatever the technical term is) the keyless entry signals often will also wifi jam the house so that the Ring cameras don't record them stealing the car or notify the house owner.

Wired cameras or those with backup SD cards is the only sure way to keep a recording. Of course, the SD card option doesn't work if the whole thing is stolen!

We have properly wall mounted our Ring doorbell and it comes with a "special" screwdriver to attach it, but I've always thought those screwdrivers are easy to get so anyone could steal it if they had 30 seconds to unscrew them.

I would be concerned too though OP about burglary. You were seen leaving the house with someone going to an airport. They may very well think that you're all going and have taken the doorbell thinking you'll try and log in and just assume that it's disconnected itself for some reason.

If you do get another Ring doorbell, either attach it to the wall, or get one of the door holders that make it difficult for it to be stolen.

I'd never rely on WiFi for anything.

(Frankly I would rely on any modern tech ....)

I really don't think so. That seems far more far-fetched to me!

And if it was, they could have removed it any night. Why wait until 5 mins after e have gone out? And I don't believe a neighbour has been sitting up each night waiting for us to leave! At least, I hope not.

No neighbour should find it intrusive; they are far enough away.

Re the milkman, our doorbell doesn't pick up any movement after dark normally, even though there's a night vision setting. In our case, it's because we've had to mount it where almost half of the view in the picture is the wall of the house. That seems to mess around with the view of the driveway as it makes it bright, with the driveway dark.

I've bought an angled wall mount to angle it away from the wall more, but haven't had the opportunity (or patience) to remove the old one and install the new one yet, but hopefully it will work.

We've had a few instances of people acting suspiciously around people's cars lately, so I really should do it.

Oh FFS. I also read it as the OP was still out and on the airport run.

Well at least you weren't burgled last night. I would agree with PP that I'd try to make it really bloody obvious for the next few days that you have not gone on holiday.

Your milkman shouldn't be able to avoid being detected by your bell - is your bell faulty?

Mine doesn't always detect my milkman - it depends on whether he comes round the left or the right side of the car on the drive I think. But mine isn't a Ring, it's a cheaper version.

Absolutely pointless as I can only read half of this, the other part is missing 🤦‍♀️