Deleted account with cameras attached

[SeanRR]

We've accidentally deleted our Nest account while cameras were still connected.

Since we can't sign in, we can't release the cameras.

Can we revive our deleted account (deleted yesterday), or is there another way to use these cameras again?

[MplsCustomer]

@SeanRR 

Perhaps this "Recover a recently deleted Google Account" topic will help:

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6236295

[SeanRR]

Thanks MplsCustomer,

Great idea!

Unfortunately, that link is for a Google account, not a Nest account. The corresponding Google account is still up and running. We had not migrated our Nest account 'into' our Google account so they remained separate.

Searching for restoring a Nest account isn't coming up with anything as helpful.

Sean

[MplsCustomer]

@SeanRR 

If you have NOT migrated your Nest Account to a Google Account, I don't know how you could have a "corresponding Google account". (By the way, you cannot migrate a Nest Account to a Google Account that already has Google Nest devices installed.)

Since you could use any email in the Google Nest app, recovery of the deleted email account would depend on whoever your email provider was.

If what you actually did was to delete your Google Nest "home/structure" from the Google Nest app, it does the following:

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9293015?hl=en&sjid=12487900974584040507-NA#zippy=%2Cmov...

You cannot undo that action.

If that's what you've done, I think you'll need to do a factory reset on all of your Google Nest devices and then reinstall each of them in the Google Nest app.

[SeanRR]

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9297676?hl=en-CA&co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid#delete-acc...

I found this link that says,

"Nest cameras and doorbells won't work without an account. If you delete your account, you won’t be able to use your Nest camera or doorbell until you add it to another account in the Nest app."

So I'll give it another try on Monday and we'll see how it goes. 

Thanks again for your help, I'll report back to close this issue one way or another on monday.

Have a great weekend!

[SeanRR]

Hey MplsCustomer, thanks for jogging my memory and for your help!

The user was a Nest user as well as a Google Workspace email distribution group address, so it isn't actually a "Google" account even though it looks like one. It doesn't have its own Google password. For the purposes of signing in to the Nest App, I would use "Sign in with Nest" vs "Sign in with Google".

So yes, there still is an active email address albeit without its own inbox. I don't see a "recover your nest account" option in any Googling I've done so far. I tried signing in at home.nest.com with the deleted account but of course it wasn't found. I tried a password reset but no email has arrived. I'm pretty sure it's gone.

I will have the cameras in-hand on Monday and will attempt factory reset, but my colleague tried this earlier and was told we had to remove the device from the previous account. I've run across this issue a few times in this forum but the official support answers always seem to not read the entire posts and don't recognize that the account is deleted. That's why I decided to open a new issue that is hopefully worded a little more clearly. You seem to understand what's going on, anyway! 

In my Nest app, I clicked through to a location (one of three) and 'removed account', mistakenly thinking I was removing "that location's account" and its cameras. Obviously my fault for not looking up the proper procedure.

Thanks for your help,

Sean

[SeanRR]

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9297676?hl=en-CA&co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid#delete-acc...

This link says

"Nest cameras and doorbells won't work without an account. If you delete your account, you won’t be able to use your Nest camera or doorbell until you add it to another account in the Nest app."

So I'll try it again on Monday. Hopefully after a few days I won't get the same error message that we saw earlier today.

Have a great weekend!

[MplsCustomer · Accepted solution]

@SeanRR 

I think you should consider contacting Support for assistance (https://support.google.com/googlenest/gethelp).

We migrated several years ago, and so we no longer have an option to delete a "Nest Account". I don't know exactly how that differs from deleting a Google Nest "home/structure".

I also don't know how you could have signed onto the Google Nest app with a Google Workspace email distribution group address" without a password, but I guess it does not make any difference now.

Yes, you are supposed to remove Google Nest devices from the previous account in the Google Nest app before you can reinstall them. Judging from past posts in this forum, customers can sometimes do a factory reset and reinstall them even if they hadn't been previously removed. I've also seen posts in the past where Google Nest Community Specialists have recommended unplugging the Google Nest device for a full 48 hours--along with additional steps, apparently to force the device to reset; sometimes this apparently works and sometimes it does not. See this thread for details; it's the post from @aatienza:

https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Cameras-and-Doorbells/No-contact-with-former-owners-of-Nest-c...

[SeanRR]

To help with your incredulity, it was never a Google account with a password/inbox/etc. It has always been a distro address in our corp Google account.

It's an old Nest account, at least 5 years, maybe more? We signed up for a Nest account using that email address, could receive mail at that address, and used it like we would any email address for our Nest account. We didn't ever do the migration for that reason, it wasn't an actual account that could "sign in" anywhere to anything Google.

Hope that clears it up. I can't imagine why there would be any sort of restriction to not allow us to use that, or any other working email address as a "Nest Account", back before they were the same thing as a "Google Account".

[MplsCustomer]

@SeanRR 

That all makes sense. I just don't know what you actually did when you say you "deleted your Nest account" or "removed account". As I said, since we've migrated we don't have that option, and Google Nest no longer documents such an option; all they document now is leaving a "home".

It seems you may have a G-suite account, which I know will not work with the Google Home app (to the frustration of many customers), but it may continue to work with the Google Nest app (at least until Google Nest eventually forces everyone to migrate). I just don't know the way forward for you if you've deleted this account.

[SeanRR]

Reporting back, the 48 hour delay appears to have worked and I was able to connect the orphaned cameras to a new account without issue.

Thanks for your input, MplsCustomer. You've been very helpful.

This matter is now closed.

[Juni]

Hi folks,

As we got our resolution here, I'm going to mark this one as resolved. Please feel free to open up a new thread if you need assistance.

Appreciate the help here, MplsCustomer.

Cheers,

Juni