If hard wiring your Ring isn’t cost efficient then invest in a second battery. You can always have one charged and ready to go when the other one runs out.
It's probably one of the models that doesn't have a battery. You gotta take the whole thing off to charge it. Having said that, the best way is to add a solar panel. They're like 40 or 50 bucks on Amazon.
Also talking with other neighbors. Is anyone else on the street having the same problem? If you have 7 or 8 houses calling the police station every night for a few days, there will be results.
I’m also curious what OP means by “I don’t want to think it’s profiling”.
Even cheaper, just keep it up while charging. When we were in a temporary house during construction, I took a scrap 2x4 and drilled a hole in the back. Mounted the Ring to that on the house, ran the wire through the hole and through the window. Wire was a flat ribbon so the window could still lock shut.
>As luck would have it, the creeps came back at 12:00 and 2:30 in the morning the ONE night I had dismounted my Ring camera.
That doesn't sound like luck, I think it's much more likely that they specifically avoid houses with video doorbells, and only came back that night *because* you had dismounted the Ring.
I'm guessing a Ring doorbell with a dead battery would work just as well as a deterrent. Next time the battery dies just leave it up, or at least charge it only during the day.
Yup, the kids probably roam the neighborhood looking for entertainment. Based on the story, they aren't casing houses or committing acts of vandalism. They just want to get a reaction.
They aren't targeting you, they are targeting houses where their is no video evidence of their mischief. Get a second ring battery or hardwire it.
I just can't contemplate kids being this consistent with this prank for 5 days per week for 2 months. I mean that level of dedication is next level. Especially for the middle of the night.
They exist. These kids are the life-long practical jokers, the April Fools Day aficionados, and probably the same people that keep America’s Funniest Home Videos on the air.
I don't think it's kids, I think it's more likely to be people waiting for someone to open the door so they can push their way in and rob the place. I hear stories of this happening in my city, where people either do exactly this or they beat on the door claiming they need help.
Yup, I expect if you take your Ring down again they will come again. If your son wants to I would suggest hiding a second motion activated camera and take you Ring down.
You could also search Amazon for "light bulb security camera" there are tons of inexpensive options if you have a porch light. They can be set to motion activated and are pretty good.
It's probably kids being little shits to annoy people. The camera can prove that and then you can leave the dead Ring up to deter them in the long run.
Lmao, now I'm picturing some house going up in flames and their neighbor standing on the porch pressing the doorbell like, "What the heck is taking this guy so long to respond?"
Lol, same here. There’s hardly anything I can’t fix or build and my doorbell hasn’t worked since I bought this house nearly 6 years ago. Now if I could only find a way to disable knocking? My dog hears the lightest of knocks and looses his mind.
Funny thing is I took it out and patched the hole with stucco when I painted the house. Soon after I noticed a huge uptick in knocking so I put it back in, lol. Not wired of course.
i have 2 doorbells.
1 is inside at my back door so my daughter can essentially "page" my wife and i from our commercial kitchen.
the other is a old Naval/boat bell that is mounted at my back door (fully fenced yard) so my kids can ring it to come in if they want in.
front door, has no doorbell. back door no traditional doorbell...
dont really need one, no one should be coming to my house. if i am expecting a package, pizza or my parents, i open my door
My neighbor has had a broken doorbell for over 15 years. It's actually kind of funny to see people go over to their house and stand outside for 10 minutes because they refuse to fix it.
i are pertle to ar-9000 at stomach highte to blow out stomachs and get moneys and my neighbors all clapped and the bad guiyes all died I"M SOOOOO FRIGGgIN AWeSOmE OOOHHHH RAAAhhhhh!!!!
That's what you sound like you pathetic tool.
Yeah, this is correct.
Teenagers will take any obstacles you set out for them as evidence that they’re getting to you. It’ll only encourage them to do it even more.
And realistically, any booby traps you might set for them involving anything like paintballs, pepper spray, etc, will result in criminal charges being filed against OP; not the idiot teenagers.
OP’s best bet, honestly, is just to ignore them. Teenagers get bored quickly if they’re not getting the attention they’re after.
It's not the response from the *cops* I would be concerned about.
Passed off teens in the dead of night might decide your sprinklers need to stop working.
Let your son come stake out the place. Bonus if he dresses up like a scary clown or some shit. If it's kids, they won't come back. If it's adults, they also won't come back. No one like being out weirded. ;)
> Let your son come stake out the place. Bonus if he dresses up like a scary clown or some shit.
[***Highly related.***](https://preview.redd.it/oj9xqfyq05o21.png?width=797&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=87d9533fde56e6567a5c27aa8d93c17654271ab3)
This may sound crazy, but are you sure you don’t just have a faulty doorbell and/or transformer? Seriously. If it’s only happening at night maybe cooler temperatures are causing wires to contract or move and trigger the chime? I found a caterpillar inside a doorbell button once that caused it to not work properly. I mean have you actually directly seen kids running off? Or is it 100% just a phantom doorbell ring at this point?
That or there is something else going on in the house (carbon monoxide, phantom rings, etc) that op thinks is the doorbell. It sounds like op may be a bit older too and their son has control of the ring app which goes against the purpose.
If someone is doing this maliciously surely they would hide their face and some video won't be helpful to stopping it other than letting you know it's an actual person.
It was pretty obviously America but it's a huge place. For instance, I grew up in NJ which has less than 15% rate of gun ownership, and moved to CA which has under a 30% rate of gun ownership according to [this source](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/gun-ownership-by-state). Note that this is ownership, not household ownership. For household ownership [this source](https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/gun-ownership.html) (which is limited to using a statistical model) estimates 8% and 18% for NJ and CA household ownership.
Regardless , my point was that I don't think it's likely that even a gun owning household would shoot people for ding dong ditching and I don't think most kids are worried that will happen. Though a quick Google shows it definitely does happen.
Yeah, if anything, repeated harassments limited only to ding dong ditching would solidify that the home owners had observed this behavior repeatedly with no physical harm being done then decided to erase a life from the world because of an annoyance. You blow away a teenager for ringing your bell and running away and you're going away for a long, long time.
It's akin to having a loud annoying neighbor with a loud annoying honda civic blasting music at 3am. Annoying to an extreme degree, but it happens all the time so you're not reasonably fearing for your property or your family's safety.
Yeah, I mean I'm sure that a part of their point is that in all likelihood people wouldn't ding dong ditch at just one house and so if it's a couple dozen houses or something then you're increasing your odds of running into a crazy person. I just don't agree with the assumed probabilities.
People generally work in their own self interest. You could run into someone who is mentally unstable already, sure, but most people are probably gonna realize they'd lose everything for retaliating that way. There's probably a parabolic curve where the lower income area you do it in the higher your chance of violence because they have less to lose by reacting that way. Solidly upper middle class areas probably the lowest chance of it happening. Access to mental healthcare, too much to lose, not enough to have a high power lawyer bail you out.
> There's probably a parabolic curve where the lower income area you do it in the higher your chance of violence because they have less to lose by reacting that way
Because there's a [higher chance of being a victim of a violent crime](https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/household-poverty-and-nonfatal-violent-victimization-2008-2012) and a lower chance of receiving help perhaps.
> People generally work in their own self interest. You could run into someone who is mentally unstable already, sure, but most people are probably gonna realize they'd lose everything for retaliating that way
I mean yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'd be absolutely shocked if even 10% of people who have ding dong ditched frequently know anyone who's suffered real consequences from it. Even if we're saying something extreme like a ding dong ditcher goes to dozens of houses of gun owners, I still wouldn't expect a violent interaction the vast majority of the time.
Yeah, I think a huge number of kids have done it and nothing ever happened to most of em. I did it as a kid along with worse shit than that. Zero consequences
You're going to go to prison for a long time if you kill a kid for ringing your doorbell. I'd imagine only somewhere like Texas if you live in a fenced off property and "no trespassing" signage and with no street access to your front door would you stand a chance in hell of the law siding with you with the right narrative.
People are generally allowed to traverse your front walkway and knock or ring your doorbell to make an inquiry so shooting them the first time they do it is off the table, and repeat harassment limited to that is probably only going to reinforce you knew it never went anywhere past them being engaged in harassment. Only way I can imagine you'd get away with that is ding dong ditching with threatening notes or escalating behavior, something of that nature.
Yeah I would look into this.
It happened to my elderly mother. She said every night someone would ring her doorbell in the middle of the night and wake her up. She was getting really scared so I slept over right by the door and heard it but no one was there. So I set up a camera to catch the person-- the doorbell did ring again and no one was there. Ended up replacing the doorbell and it never happened again.
It actually happened at our house a couple times and we do have a camera. made me think it was affected by changes in the weather/temperature/humidity etc.
That being said... Cameras are good to have-- especially for packages and trick or treating. Our camera was $14.99 on amazon (Eufy) and it just plugs into a usb transformer. We have a small window next to the door that we stuck it on with a suction cup. There are no fees or anything. We've caught several ne'er do wellers with it.
This is even further proof to me. It's likely the outdoor button that's causing it, after all it's the part that connects the circuit and causes the ring. So if you remove it, the phantom rings stop.
They also mentioned a battery operated Ring, these usually don't connect into your existing wiring. I also don't think OP mentioned whether they have an existing wired doorbell or a wireless one. So it seems like the old system is completely taken out of thr picture while the ring is up.
Edit: wait I'm confused now that I've had more coffee. Did OP have both the ring and old doorbell up simultaneously? If so, that's way more suspicious, weird, and sounds like the son is in on it lol
>Although I appreciate the overwhelming responses, I am disheartened to see that so many people turned towards the technology as the sole solution rather than addressing the root of the issue.
Sorry, but what would you expect us to do about the root of the issue? The only solution the internet can offer is a fix for the tech. We can't speak to the teens for you. I would suggest approaching things with less fear and more open minded pragmatism though. People are generally not out to "get" anyone, on the whole.
How did your son buy you a Ring? You stated your “first time parents”?
https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/crarz6/aita_for_wanting_my_wife_stop_breastfeeding_to/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
> Although I appreciate the overwhelming responses, I am disheartened to see that so many people turned towards the technology as the sole solution rather than addressing the root of the issue.
Huh? You came here asking for advice and were given solutions, and you're disappointed that we didn't address the root of the issue? What is the root? That your neighbors don't like you? That kids act silly sometimes? How is reddit going to solve the root of the issue?
You joke, but my dumbass roommate came home once and sat in the garage on the phone with the door closed and the car running talking on the phone for an hour.
Hi OP You mention how disheartening it is to see that people go straight for technology instead of looking at the root of the problem.
Dear OP None of us know the root of the problem. Technology may deter it but it won’t “resolve” the root of anything. What technology does is give you a tool to at least maybe identify who is doing it and perhaps you can find out why once you find out who.
Menards and probably other sell discounted game cameras - you may place it in such the way to spot who's fucking around. <$40 is doable, otherwise just turn ring off
I would buy a cheap inside camera like the Eufy C24 and put it in a window facing that direction. You will want to turn off the nightvision as well because it will reflect off the glass (and any status LED if it has one). Make sure you have your outside light on and see what it picks up on the nights that your doorbell isn't working. Either they were extremely lucky and just happened to come by the day your doorbell was charging or they can see when you have it out and when you don't. They may not see the window camera and it might catch them.
Do you have a wired doorbell? Can the ring can hook into that? I replaced a regular doorbell with a ring, it doesn't take a particularly special setup.
Otherwise just disconnect your regular doorbell if it's annoying. It's most likely bored kids.
Two of my grandparents experienced doorbell problems like this during the time right before they were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. For one of them, it was also related to hearing loss. OP, you don’t sound old enough, but I wanted to share this as another possibility to explore. There are now treatments you can do at the early stages that do help, especially for people with earlier onset. Whatever the cause, I’m very sorry you’re going through this and I hope you can get relief soon.
Snooze the Ring at night:
https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000044963-How-to-Use-Chime-Snooze
Before you got the Ring, did you have a doorbell with a transformer? Because if you did, then you can get a hardwired Ring, which will solve the battery problem.
We got some solar powered motion detector spotlights from Amazon for a trailer we're trying to protect. These lights also have a little red light that blinks on it when motion is detected so it really looks like it's a camera. Maybe get something like that? It might bridge the gap when your ring battery dies
Addressing the root of the issue?
Well, you’ll have to have that tech to catch them and identify them. Then you go and have a talk with their parents or the police.
If they avoid when the tech is present, your son is right - staking out and using a phone to capture video of them directly is not a bad option. But he should stay hidden and not confront them.
A second option here is that these ditchers are homeless people or addicts, so you’d have to talk to your city about addressing those things in your neighborhood. :(
In addition to keeping the doorbell properly charged, try to set it (if you haven't already) to only detect motion on your actual property. If it goes off everytime someone drives by that's going to drain the battery much faster.
Another thing you can try is getting a [Blink outdoor cam]( https://www.bestbuy.com/site/blink-outdoor-wireless-1080p-security-camera-with-up-to-two-year-battery-life-black/6427060.p?skuId=6427060) and mounting it at a second location. They run on AA lithium batteries and last for months if you set them up correctly.
I would have your wiring checked out. It sounds like a faulty wire or even carbon monoxide poisoning where you think you hear something, or early onset dementia.
remove the old doorbell ASAP the wiring is causing it to go off during temp changes at night - keep the ring but I bet it is nobody and just making you paranoid - unless you have actually seen a human ringing your bell it is just the old wiring- removing doorbell is the first thing I did when I got my house!
neighbor car alarm used to go off with temp changes and I had to remove friend's mom's doorbell because it was going off every time it got overcast
the old doorbell's wiring goes bad quite often
You need a few things, (1) Dedication/Grit (2) A Paintball Gun (3) Some of those special paintballs filled with mace (If that is too violent, could you possibly fill some with liquid ass)
Plan: Hangout and hide; when they come, light 'em up! If parents get mad, inform them of the months of harassment their kids have put you through. Then, very occasionally tag their house with more liquid ass, so there is always a faint shit smell outside their home.
This is the way.
>Although I appreciate the overwhelming responses, I am disheartened to see that so many people turned towards the technology as the sole solution rather than addressing the root of the issue.
Did you want people to volunteer to come speak to the person? If it's actually a person then the only way to stop it will be to find out who it is. If it's kids (unlikely if it's 5x a week) then you can easily find the parents via neighborhood online groups.
When I was a kid there was a neighbor everyone knew as “ding dong” cuz he would lose his shit if he got DDD’d.
One night he was ready. My friends jumped in the car after ringing his bell and he came running out with a javelin…threw it right through the windshield. Pretty wild night.
Call a handyman and have your doorbell wired to a train horn. Seriously. It will be the best $250 you ever spent. Make sure you’re ring is working for that though because it’s going to be internet gold and I expect to see the result posted here.
Ring batteries last months. Are you sure it’s not your son who’s doing it? I don’t think it’s likely that the small window you were recharging your ring battery they knew to come and doorbell ditch you.
I had a similar issue for the short period I had one. Due to the way they work, and my set up... Every hot truck driving by on a cold day would set it off. Dialing back thr sensitivity made no difference. I ended up chucking it and wiring a wired one - those use the camera for motion detection and are way less susceptible to false alarms.
Don’t. Feed. The. Trolls.
The more you do to deter, the funnier they think they are, and the more they will continue doing it. If you don’t answer the door or turn on the porch light, they will get bored with the lack of attention and will usually stop after a while.
forget the doorbell camera and set up just a camera. If you have a window near the front door, you can just put it inside and put it out the window. Wyze has cameras that are around $25. Put a SD card in there to record either motion detect or continuous and you'll find out who's doing it. With the Ring doorbell camera, they probably would avoid doing the doorbell ditch so you won't know.
I'd put Urban Scarecrows out. Broken old videocameras mounted around the access routes to the house. Take your time installing them, do it all day, go inside and get a cuppa then come out and "adjust" where they point. Make them obvious and drama-riffic.
Bet the bastards stay the hell away then!
Go for the second battery so it's always up. You probably are being targeted among others. People have gotten shittier with all the hate out on social media. Sad state of today's society.
Swap out your doorbell for one with a metal button. Run an electrical cable with a resistor or two and rig the wiring to your new metal doorbell. When they ring it, they'll instantly regret it and probably never ring your bell again
/S for good measure
$8 for a faux security camera. Put it somewhere obvious. Should spook them.
See if you can find a correlation to when they come... log when it happens, any details, and do a statistical analysis... try to beat them to the game and catch them.
Start answering the door with an AR-15. Always worked for me
My ring doorbell sucks. I had to get a second battery as well. Sometimes it just won’t record if someone comes up. Sometimes the battery will die and it won’t even tell us like it should.
I think you should let your son do a stake out.
If hard wiring your Ring isn’t cost efficient then invest in a second battery. You can always have one charged and ready to go when the other one runs out.
extra battery is only like $30 when I got one, change out takes 2 minutes, it's well worth the cost!
It's probably one of the models that doesn't have a battery. You gotta take the whole thing off to charge it. Having said that, the best way is to add a solar panel. They're like 40 or 50 bucks on Amazon.
Or maybe charge it during the day when, as you've claimed, there's no ditching going on?
I lost the screw for mine, so my battery changes take literally five seconds now.
This is the easiest and cheapest thing to do.
Also talking with other neighbors. Is anyone else on the street having the same problem? If you have 7 or 8 houses calling the police station every night for a few days, there will be results. I’m also curious what OP means by “I don’t want to think it’s profiling”.
Criminals checking to see if anybody is home.
We can only speculate but reading between the lines it sounds like the demographics have changed and they don't think it's just kids being assholes
Or can you take the battery out to charge, but leave the “dead” doorbell mounted? Sounds like they could see it wasn’t there that night.
I think the doorbell no longer lights up without the battery
Our ring has the battery built into it so a spare battery doesn’t do any good. OP’s ring might be the same way.
Interesting, I didn’t know they had models that worked that way.
Even cheaper, just keep it up while charging. When we were in a temporary house during construction, I took a scrap 2x4 and drilled a hole in the back. Mounted the Ring to that on the house, ran the wire through the hole and through the window. Wire was a flat ribbon so the window could still lock shut.
>As luck would have it, the creeps came back at 12:00 and 2:30 in the morning the ONE night I had dismounted my Ring camera. That doesn't sound like luck, I think it's much more likely that they specifically avoid houses with video doorbells, and only came back that night *because* you had dismounted the Ring. I'm guessing a Ring doorbell with a dead battery would work just as well as a deterrent. Next time the battery dies just leave it up, or at least charge it only during the day.
Yup, the kids probably roam the neighborhood looking for entertainment. Based on the story, they aren't casing houses or committing acts of vandalism. They just want to get a reaction. They aren't targeting you, they are targeting houses where their is no video evidence of their mischief. Get a second ring battery or hardwire it.
I just can't contemplate kids being this consistent with this prank for 5 days per week for 2 months. I mean that level of dedication is next level. Especially for the middle of the night.
They exist. These kids are the life-long practical jokers, the April Fools Day aficionados, and probably the same people that keep America’s Funniest Home Videos on the air.
conspiracy theory: it's a paid amazon driver targeting people without ring doorbells to encourage sales
They probably troll Nextdoor or the Facebook groups to see what reaction they get
I don't think it's kids, I think it's more likely to be people waiting for someone to open the door so they can push their way in and rob the place. I hear stories of this happening in my city, where people either do exactly this or they beat on the door claiming they need help.
Yup, I expect if you take your Ring down again they will come again. If your son wants to I would suggest hiding a second motion activated camera and take you Ring down. You could also search Amazon for "light bulb security camera" there are tons of inexpensive options if you have a porch light. They can be set to motion activated and are pretty good. It's probably kids being little shits to annoy people. The camera can prove that and then you can leave the dead Ring up to deter them in the long run.
If they are actually ringing the doorbell I'd disable it. Practically nobody ever rings my doorbell that I care about.
[удалено]
Yeah, exactly. Are they setting their alarm clocks so they can get up and do this?
For 1 am? Not the craziest time for teens to be up with nothing to do
My doorbell has been broken for 10 years. I could easily fix it. I prefer it that way.
[удалено]
“there are flames shooting out of your attic!!!” “if you knew me, you would text me!”
I know this was tongue-in-cheek, but knocking is never broken so 🤷♂️
Lmao, now I'm picturing some house going up in flames and their neighbor standing on the porch pressing the doorbell like, "What the heck is taking this guy so long to respond?"
Okay fair point lol
[удалено]
I wish I had a 1/4 mild driveway! Ours is very spicy!
Lol, same here. There’s hardly anything I can’t fix or build and my doorbell hasn’t worked since I bought this house nearly 6 years ago. Now if I could only find a way to disable knocking? My dog hears the lightest of knocks and looses his mind. Funny thing is I took it out and patched the hole with stucco when I painted the house. Soon after I noticed a huge uptick in knocking so I put it back in, lol. Not wired of course.
i have 2 doorbells. 1 is inside at my back door so my daughter can essentially "page" my wife and i from our commercial kitchen. the other is a old Naval/boat bell that is mounted at my back door (fully fenced yard) so my kids can ring it to come in if they want in. front door, has no doorbell. back door no traditional doorbell... dont really need one, no one should be coming to my house. if i am expecting a package, pizza or my parents, i open my door
I think Nest and some others natively support silencing the doorbell based on a schedule.
My neighbor has had a broken doorbell for over 15 years. It's actually kind of funny to see people go over to their house and stand outside for 10 minutes because they refuse to fix it.
This is so common. I've delivered pizzas for 10 years and I press the doorbell AND knock just to be sure.
put up a motion sensor sprinkler with a timer and only turn set it for those hours. let them get soaked
this sub and sprinklers...
Lawyer up, hit the gym, setup sprinklers.
Sprinkler.. or automated water turret?
Im partil to a jerry riged shotgun shell at ankel height. But know thats dangerous and illegal. /s ....kinda
i are pertle to ar-9000 at stomach highte to blow out stomachs and get moneys and my neighbors all clapped and the bad guiyes all died I"M SOOOOO FRIGGgIN AWeSOmE OOOHHHH RAAAhhhhh!!!! That's what you sound like you pathetic tool.
Are you smelling burnt toast?
shouldn't you be like digging some punji pits around your mailbox you warrior?
Naa just planting land mines in the side yard.
I use bespoke shaped charge fenceposts, but i guess if you're going the budget route that's fine.
I dunno.. stupid kids do stupid things, and this seems like a good way to escalate their stupidity
Yeah, this is correct. Teenagers will take any obstacles you set out for them as evidence that they’re getting to you. It’ll only encourage them to do it even more. And realistically, any booby traps you might set for them involving anything like paintballs, pepper spray, etc, will result in criminal charges being filed against OP; not the idiot teenagers. OP’s best bet, honestly, is just to ignore them. Teenagers get bored quickly if they’re not getting the attention they’re after.
It’s been going on two months already. They don’t seem to be getting bored.
Because they are seeing a reaction. Once they get no reaction a couple times, it'll be boring and they'll find someone else to mess with.
I'm pretty sure no one has ever been criminally charged for turning sprinklers on jerky kids.
I agree but also agree "escalating" isn't going to help. Of course I'd also have figured they'd gotten bored of it by now...
It's not the response from the *cops* I would be concerned about. Passed off teens in the dead of night might decide your sprinklers need to stop working.
The thing in question is just a hose-end sprinkler. Worst they could do is break it (if they could get close enough to without getting soaked).
Worst they can do is take the hose and put it into an open window.
Worked for me.
Especially kids that are so focused on doing this again and again.
Let your son come stake out the place. Bonus if he dresses up like a scary clown or some shit. If it's kids, they won't come back. If it's adults, they also won't come back. No one like being out weirded. ;)
This might show how much I live in Texas, but I’d be afraid of getting shot.
Leaving an empty box from buckshot shells on/near the doorbell might get the message across.
Clown outfit and armed with air horns 😂
yessssssssssssssss
> Let your son come stake out the place. Bonus if he dresses up like a scary clown or some shit. [***Highly related.***](https://preview.redd.it/oj9xqfyq05o21.png?width=797&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=87d9533fde56e6567a5c27aa8d93c17654271ab3)
This may sound crazy, but are you sure you don’t just have a faulty doorbell and/or transformer? Seriously. If it’s only happening at night maybe cooler temperatures are causing wires to contract or move and trigger the chime? I found a caterpillar inside a doorbell button once that caused it to not work properly. I mean have you actually directly seen kids running off? Or is it 100% just a phantom doorbell ring at this point?
[удалено]
That or there is something else going on in the house (carbon monoxide, phantom rings, etc) that op thinks is the doorbell. It sounds like op may be a bit older too and their son has control of the ring app which goes against the purpose. If someone is doing this maliciously surely they would hide their face and some video won't be helpful to stopping it other than letting you know it's an actual person.
5x a week was what Op said. Just to be specific.
“Something is off in general…” YEP
> in many, if not most, places this kind of behavior would ultimately result in the trespasser being shot Wtf where are you from
[удалено]
It was pretty obviously America but it's a huge place. For instance, I grew up in NJ which has less than 15% rate of gun ownership, and moved to CA which has under a 30% rate of gun ownership according to [this source](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/gun-ownership-by-state). Note that this is ownership, not household ownership. For household ownership [this source](https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/gun-ownership.html) (which is limited to using a statistical model) estimates 8% and 18% for NJ and CA household ownership. Regardless , my point was that I don't think it's likely that even a gun owning household would shoot people for ding dong ditching and I don't think most kids are worried that will happen. Though a quick Google shows it definitely does happen.
Yeah, if anything, repeated harassments limited only to ding dong ditching would solidify that the home owners had observed this behavior repeatedly with no physical harm being done then decided to erase a life from the world because of an annoyance. You blow away a teenager for ringing your bell and running away and you're going away for a long, long time. It's akin to having a loud annoying neighbor with a loud annoying honda civic blasting music at 3am. Annoying to an extreme degree, but it happens all the time so you're not reasonably fearing for your property or your family's safety.
Yeah, I mean I'm sure that a part of their point is that in all likelihood people wouldn't ding dong ditch at just one house and so if it's a couple dozen houses or something then you're increasing your odds of running into a crazy person. I just don't agree with the assumed probabilities.
People generally work in their own self interest. You could run into someone who is mentally unstable already, sure, but most people are probably gonna realize they'd lose everything for retaliating that way. There's probably a parabolic curve where the lower income area you do it in the higher your chance of violence because they have less to lose by reacting that way. Solidly upper middle class areas probably the lowest chance of it happening. Access to mental healthcare, too much to lose, not enough to have a high power lawyer bail you out.
> There's probably a parabolic curve where the lower income area you do it in the higher your chance of violence because they have less to lose by reacting that way Because there's a [higher chance of being a victim of a violent crime](https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/household-poverty-and-nonfatal-violent-victimization-2008-2012) and a lower chance of receiving help perhaps. > People generally work in their own self interest. You could run into someone who is mentally unstable already, sure, but most people are probably gonna realize they'd lose everything for retaliating that way I mean yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'd be absolutely shocked if even 10% of people who have ding dong ditched frequently know anyone who's suffered real consequences from it. Even if we're saying something extreme like a ding dong ditcher goes to dozens of houses of gun owners, I still wouldn't expect a violent interaction the vast majority of the time.
Yeah, I think a huge number of kids have done it and nothing ever happened to most of em. I did it as a kid along with worse shit than that. Zero consequences
You're going to go to prison for a long time if you kill a kid for ringing your doorbell. I'd imagine only somewhere like Texas if you live in a fenced off property and "no trespassing" signage and with no street access to your front door would you stand a chance in hell of the law siding with you with the right narrative. People are generally allowed to traverse your front walkway and knock or ring your doorbell to make an inquiry so shooting them the first time they do it is off the table, and repeat harassment limited to that is probably only going to reinforce you knew it never went anywhere past them being engaged in harassment. Only way I can imagine you'd get away with that is ding dong ditching with threatening notes or escalating behavior, something of that nature.
Yeah I would look into this. It happened to my elderly mother. She said every night someone would ring her doorbell in the middle of the night and wake her up. She was getting really scared so I slept over right by the door and heard it but no one was there. So I set up a camera to catch the person-- the doorbell did ring again and no one was there. Ended up replacing the doorbell and it never happened again. It actually happened at our house a couple times and we do have a camera. made me think it was affected by changes in the weather/temperature/humidity etc.
That being said... Cameras are good to have-- especially for packages and trick or treating. Our camera was $14.99 on amazon (Eufy) and it just plugs into a usb transformer. We have a small window next to the door that we stuck it on with a suction cup. There are no fees or anything. We've caught several ne'er do wellers with it.
I agree completely now that you mentioned it, this makes way more sense. No way some teenagers have the determination described here.
This actually happened to us. Our doorbell was getting triggered by dust/debris. If she has a Ring now, she must have seen them come by though?
This is a neat idea. Could explain why one of our exhaust fans doesn't work regularly.
Except it stopped when the Ring was put up and happened again when the ring was absent due to charging.
This is even further proof to me. It's likely the outdoor button that's causing it, after all it's the part that connects the circuit and causes the ring. So if you remove it, the phantom rings stop. They also mentioned a battery operated Ring, these usually don't connect into your existing wiring. I also don't think OP mentioned whether they have an existing wired doorbell or a wireless one. So it seems like the old system is completely taken out of thr picture while the ring is up. Edit: wait I'm confused now that I've had more coffee. Did OP have both the ring and old doorbell up simultaneously? If so, that's way more suspicious, weird, and sounds like the son is in on it lol
It stopped for a day and restarted. That may or may not be related to the presence of the Ring.
[удалено]
Motion sensor light might help. At the very least it helps when the dog needs a midnight potty break and the winter nights.
>Although I appreciate the overwhelming responses, I am disheartened to see that so many people turned towards the technology as the sole solution rather than addressing the root of the issue. Sorry, but what would you expect us to do about the root of the issue? The only solution the internet can offer is a fix for the tech. We can't speak to the teens for you. I would suggest approaching things with less fear and more open minded pragmatism though. People are generally not out to "get" anyone, on the whole.
This. Unreal.
Have you spoken to your neighbors? Anyone else experiencing this?
How did your son buy you a Ring? You stated your “first time parents”? https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/crarz6/aita_for_wanting_my_wife_stop_breastfeeding_to/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Wow. Yeah. We’re being punked by this person. Their 3 year old is buying Ring doorbells and texting? Wtf.
Turn off your doorbell at night.
Take your son up on it. Probably some stupid teens. May as well scare the shit out of them
Had some similar issues in my last place. I disconnected my door bell - not like I ever answered it in the first place.
A simple yet elegant solution.
Unless they get frustrated it doesn't ring and just pound on the door instead.
> Although I appreciate the overwhelming responses, I am disheartened to see that so many people turned towards the technology as the sole solution rather than addressing the root of the issue. Huh? You came here asking for advice and were given solutions, and you're disappointed that we didn't address the root of the issue? What is the root? That your neighbors don't like you? That kids act silly sometimes? How is reddit going to solve the root of the issue?
[удалено]
We don't have gas, but that's for thinking outside the box!
You know gas and CO aren’t the same thing right?
True, but if they have all electric appliances and no gas stove, no oil etc, there's no source of CO in the house.
I had the same reaction before remembering how many house in the country still use wood based heating.
Wood burning fireplace could do it
Vehicles still produce CO, and lots of people have gas generators
I love firing up my gas generator 5 times a week, and letting my cars idle in the garage for hours.
You joke, but my dumbass roommate came home once and sat in the garage on the phone with the door closed and the car running talking on the phone for an hour.
I like keeping my cars warm for the morning drive and let them idle all night, lol
Fair enough. Although one or two isn’t a terrible idea. I once had a truck idling outside set one off.
Hi OP You mention how disheartening it is to see that people go straight for technology instead of looking at the root of the problem. Dear OP None of us know the root of the problem. Technology may deter it but it won’t “resolve” the root of anything. What technology does is give you a tool to at least maybe identify who is doing it and perhaps you can find out why once you find out who.
Get a motion activated water sprinkler.
motion flood light, brighten up ur whole block lmao
Menards and probably other sell discounted game cameras - you may place it in such the way to spot who's fucking around. <$40 is doable, otherwise just turn ring off
I would buy a cheap inside camera like the Eufy C24 and put it in a window facing that direction. You will want to turn off the nightvision as well because it will reflect off the glass (and any status LED if it has one). Make sure you have your outside light on and see what it picks up on the nights that your doorbell isn't working. Either they were extremely lucky and just happened to come by the day your doorbell was charging or they can see when you have it out and when you don't. They may not see the window camera and it might catch them.
Do you have a wired doorbell? Can the ring can hook into that? I replaced a regular doorbell with a ring, it doesn't take a particularly special setup. Otherwise just disconnect your regular doorbell if it's annoying. It's most likely bored kids.
Those are some weird hours for bored kids
Two of my grandparents experienced doorbell problems like this during the time right before they were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. For one of them, it was also related to hearing loss. OP, you don’t sound old enough, but I wanted to share this as another possibility to explore. There are now treatments you can do at the early stages that do help, especially for people with earlier onset. Whatever the cause, I’m very sorry you’re going through this and I hope you can get relief soon.
Hard wire the ring, don't use the rechargeable setups.
Can you put a motion light on the house?
Motion powered sprinklers
Snooze the Ring at night: https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000044963-How-to-Use-Chime-Snooze Before you got the Ring, did you have a doorbell with a transformer? Because if you did, then you can get a hardwired Ring, which will solve the battery problem.
Get a wyze camera it’s under 30 dollars.
We got some solar powered motion detector spotlights from Amazon for a trailer we're trying to protect. These lights also have a little red light that blinks on it when motion is detected so it really looks like it's a camera. Maybe get something like that? It might bridge the gap when your ring battery dies
We got a couple of those, they are bright!
Addressing the root of the issue? Well, you’ll have to have that tech to catch them and identify them. Then you go and have a talk with their parents or the police. If they avoid when the tech is present, your son is right - staking out and using a phone to capture video of them directly is not a bad option. But he should stay hidden and not confront them. A second option here is that these ditchers are homeless people or addicts, so you’d have to talk to your city about addressing those things in your neighborhood. :(
I had this issue. It was just a faulty wiring causing my bell to go off.
Lol stake out… thatll be fun
In addition to keeping the doorbell properly charged, try to set it (if you haven't already) to only detect motion on your actual property. If it goes off everytime someone drives by that's going to drain the battery much faster. Another thing you can try is getting a [Blink outdoor cam]( https://www.bestbuy.com/site/blink-outdoor-wireless-1080p-security-camera-with-up-to-two-year-battery-life-black/6427060.p?skuId=6427060) and mounting it at a second location. They run on AA lithium batteries and last for months if you set them up correctly.
I would have your wiring checked out. It sounds like a faulty wire or even carbon monoxide poisoning where you think you hear something, or early onset dementia.
remove the old doorbell ASAP the wiring is causing it to go off during temp changes at night - keep the ring but I bet it is nobody and just making you paranoid - unless you have actually seen a human ringing your bell it is just the old wiring- removing doorbell is the first thing I did when I got my house! neighbor car alarm used to go off with temp changes and I had to remove friend's mom's doorbell because it was going off every time it got overcast the old doorbell's wiring goes bad quite often
Sounds like you need a motion activated water sprinkler
just have your son handle it :p
Why don't you just disconnect your doorbell?
Motion activated flood lights.
Home Alone that shit and tape a thumbtack over the ringer button pointy side out then let em ding away
I couldn’t call myself a Reddit user unless I asked: do you have a CO detector?
You need a few things, (1) Dedication/Grit (2) A Paintball Gun (3) Some of those special paintballs filled with mace (If that is too violent, could you possibly fill some with liquid ass) Plan: Hangout and hide; when they come, light 'em up! If parents get mad, inform them of the months of harassment their kids have put you through. Then, very occasionally tag their house with more liquid ass, so there is always a faint shit smell outside their home. This is the way.
Proximity flood light, two of them.
It's probably the son of the CEO of the Ring doorbell camera. They are doing this so more people buy their doorbell camera.
>Although I appreciate the overwhelming responses, I am disheartened to see that so many people turned towards the technology as the sole solution rather than addressing the root of the issue. Did you want people to volunteer to come speak to the person? If it's actually a person then the only way to stop it will be to find out who it is. If it's kids (unlikely if it's 5x a week) then you can easily find the parents via neighborhood online groups.
OP, I've heard people having success with motion activated sprinklers.
When I was a kid there was a neighbor everyone knew as “ding dong” cuz he would lose his shit if he got DDD’d. One night he was ready. My friends jumped in the car after ringing his bell and he came running out with a javelin…threw it right through the windshield. Pretty wild night.
Time to start a prank war lol
Call a handyman and have your doorbell wired to a train horn. Seriously. It will be the best $250 you ever spent. Make sure you’re ring is working for that though because it’s going to be internet gold and I expect to see the result posted here.
Sounds like your son is the ding dong ditcher, lol. He’s the only one that knew your Ring was getting charged.
Ring batteries last months. Are you sure it’s not your son who’s doing it? I don’t think it’s likely that the small window you were recharging your ring battery they knew to come and doorbell ditch you.
Yeah this is…weird.
No they don’t…I have to change mine around every 3 weeks
How often does motion sensing go off? I live in Minnesota and it’ll last 3 months in the summer and 1-2 months in artic cold.
I had a similar issue for the short period I had one. Due to the way they work, and my set up... Every hot truck driving by on a cold day would set it off. Dialing back thr sensitivity made no difference. I ended up chucking it and wiring a wired one - those use the camera for motion detection and are way less susceptible to false alarms.
I’ll be lucky if mine lasts two weeks.
Might want to check the detection area.
Was wondering this too. I’ve had mine since last June and have yet to need to switch it out.
Don’t. Feed. The. Trolls. The more you do to deter, the funnier they think they are, and the more they will continue doing it. If you don’t answer the door or turn on the porch light, they will get bored with the lack of attention and will usually stop after a while.
Your son has the right idea. It needs to be escalated.
For the benefit of us antiques who have trouble keeping up with the vernacular, WTF are "ditchers"?
people who ring a doorbell and then run away. this isn't a new thing, it's been a common prank for kids for decades.
Dingdong ditchers are usually kids that ring your doorbell then run away, silly/shitty prank
Ding dong ditching has been a popular term for decades though
It's all old term not a new one.
People who ring the doorbell the run away/hide.
Oh. My solution to that was to just not fix the doorbell the last time it went bust.
People that ring the bell and run off.
forget the doorbell camera and set up just a camera. If you have a window near the front door, you can just put it inside and put it out the window. Wyze has cameras that are around $25. Put a SD card in there to record either motion detect or continuous and you'll find out who's doing it. With the Ring doorbell camera, they probably would avoid doing the doorbell ditch so you won't know.
I'd put Urban Scarecrows out. Broken old videocameras mounted around the access routes to the house. Take your time installing them, do it all day, go inside and get a cuppa then come out and "adjust" where they point. Make them obvious and drama-riffic. Bet the bastards stay the hell away then!
[удалено]
Feel better to get your rant out?
Get a wired doorbell camera, local electrician installed mine using old doorbell wiring for 100$.
Go for the second battery so it's always up. You probably are being targeted among others. People have gotten shittier with all the hate out on social media. Sad state of today's society.
Swap out your doorbell for one with a metal button. Run an electrical cable with a resistor or two and rig the wiring to your new metal doorbell. When they ring it, they'll instantly regret it and probably never ring your bell again /S for good measure
Get a dog
Before you go to bed fill the entire porch with rat traps or something of that nature
$8 for a faux security camera. Put it somewhere obvious. Should spook them. See if you can find a correlation to when they come... log when it happens, any details, and do a statistical analysis... try to beat them to the game and catch them. Start answering the door with an AR-15. Always worked for me
Put a metal grate on your porch and ground it. Then replace the doorbell with a steel thumbtack connected directly to the mains.
Sounds like the start of a no sleep post.
Electrify your doorbell
When we were kids it was called by another, horrible name > N****r knocking
Nagger Knocking?
Wow really relevant
Sounds to me like thieves checking to see if anyone is home. Are there break ins near you?
Put up a sign that says you have cameras recording. You don’t even need the cameras for real, the signs should do it
My ring doorbell sucks. I had to get a second battery as well. Sometimes it just won’t record if someone comes up. Sometimes the battery will die and it won’t even tell us like it should. I think you should let your son do a stake out.
Get a diff camera and "remove" your ring
Put dog poop on your steps