TL;DR: If you have a wired nest cam, don't waste your time dealing with Nest if it's stolen! Just smash your head against a wall, it'll be a better use of your time.
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On June 12th, a local Meth Aficionado decided to cut down my nest cam from my front porch. Dumb thing to steal...but meth is a helluva drug.
I wasn't going to call the police on it. Not a fan and I know they'll do nothing.
While watching the footage, I came across the "we'll replace your camera if it's stolen" page.
I was skeptical, so I spoke to support. They took my serial number and account info and told me to go ahead with the police report.
So I called the police, waited around, did the song and dance.
I got a bit of a run around on how long the Police Report would take, so again, I contacted Google Support to see that my camera and situation would apply. Same answers based on the same supplied info.
So I paid for an ordered the police report. I had to go into the station to show ID to get a police report for my own stolen property...which was annoying, but I did it.
Then I went back to support, and after an hour in a chat (pretty egregious amount of time in 2022 for something a dropbox could handle), I was told that the replacement program did not apply to wired cameras.
Had the replacement page stated it did not apply to wired, the first 2 people I spoke to told me it didn't apply to wired (they had all my camera info, in fact the first person watched the video), and the 3rd person looked it up to see the camera was wired long before the 1hour mark, I'd be a lot less annoyed.
Just a stupid waste of everyone's time, and a bonkers process. This could have all been automated and fast, but I wasted upwards of 6 hours to find out some answer that could have been communicated way better.
The whole thing felt like a dropped episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, including the part of me typing this gripe, but I feel like just maybe I'll save someone in my similar situation some time and grief so I felt compelled to share.
The last support person even sent me to the wrong page to submit a grievance, and then disconnected. So I came here to burn some calories frantically typing.
Really disappointed in Google and Nest. This honestly couldn't have been handled any worse, even if you sent your own staff to steal my camera, just to annoy me. At least then I could laugh that you actively don't care about the "Don't Be Evil" thing, rather than just passively not caring about anything reasonable.
*end scene*
