I hate calling this a cosmetic issue, because cosmetic sounds harmless. We have had the same issue that so many people in this forum have complained about, the cracking or peeling of the face on the doorbell.
Our doorbell is located in an alcove more than 10’ back from the end of the roof. It rarely, if ever, is exposed to direct sunlight and the elements. A little over a year after we installed it, we noticed some cracking of the facing near the camera. No big deal, it seemed to be cosmetic. Fast forward to what is now a couple of years and the cracking is on the sides and around the doorbell button itself. Still cosmetic? Looks harmelss enough, unless you are 2 years old and closing in on your 3rd birthday. Case in point, our 2 year old daughter recently sliced her finger open on it. Nothing a bandaid and some time won’t fix, but you have got to be kidding me. Now I have toddler that is anxious about ringing the doorbell.
Sure, our previous doorbell didn’t take pictures of people on our porch (not that it has done much to deter the porch thief we had to deal with. Happy share that knucklehead’s photo), but after 10 years it still worked great, looked new, and never caused actual harm to anyone.
Since my daughter’s incident I have now cut myself on the dang thing while trying to get pictures of the serial number for Google Support. To make that experience even better, it took two chats and one phone call (where we got disconnected and I needed to reach out to rep twice via email before he called back) taking place over two days and the better part of 2 1/2 hours so that Google Support could tell me that they can’t help because the warranty had expired. Considering that the third or fourth question I was asked during my first chat was “when and where did you buy the item,” I would have hoped that the first rep, or any rep after that, could have simply done the math and said “sorry, but there is nothing that we can do.” Instead, I had the pleasure of being asked to remove the doorbell 3x, take pictures 3x , send pictures 3x, wait on hold I don’t even know how many times, tell the same boring story over and over, get interrupted repeatedly, all so that I could be told “no, see the warranty.” Customer Service had all of the information that they needed in the first 5-10 minutes to provide that exact response.
The experience wasn’t about being heard. I didn’t need to be heard and would have rather not had to waste the breathe. It was about asking a company to stand by a product that they designed and put into the market. I have seen it repeated throughout blog posts here in this community that Customer Service reps acknowledge the product is designed to last, despite all of the evidence that they are not doing that. And in my experience, the condition deteriorated so quickly that it actually became hazardous. I can’t believe that I just typed those words about a doorbell.
I think that it is beyond doubt about that this is a known quality issue. See the myriad of posts here and compare the new designs with the old. We have Google products everywhere in our life, and all this experience has left me thinking is “how do I decouple from Google as much as I can?” What a bummer.
