Safety first, be aware of what’s involved overall!
Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2024 | Rating: 2/5 | Best Sellers in Amazon Devices & Accessories
well it’s official i’m a tech idiot it’s actually more difficult than i thought it’d be to admit that but here i go i purchased this awesome camera set and an echo dot because i thought that combo would help make my life easier you know the thought i come home after a long day doing this and that and i’d be able to call out “alexa turn off exterior cameras” or something similarunfortunately i had a piece of bad luck because the echo dot wouldn’t stop saying “hello “ to me in amazingly multiple languages after a few days of this i did what anyone would do and called amazon for help and found out that there’s a whole echo dot help division that made me feel better about myself because it told me that lots of folks were having issues anyway after a bit of directions they figured out the thing had a problem and i had to send it back for a replacement i know i’m getting to the part about the cameras no worries 😉so in the meantime i figured i can still use my cameras and i set it all up and place them around the place and i feel like “yeah safer already” this is where the problems begin firstly the cameras are front heavy and just i don’t think they were meant to be just “placed around the place” after about an hour or so i started getting “movement notifications and the pictures all showing the counter top or shelf top they kept falling forward and the cameras seemed to take their movements as “motion detection” and took a picture and sent a notification to me that’s actually an excellent thing because it means that the system was doing something so that was good the bad part was that no matter what i tried over a 3 week period the cameras wouldn’t stay upright so being a dedicated amazon prime believer i called in and imagine my shock that there’s no tech support for this device i got a phone number and website for blink and i had another step along my journey to getting safer… i tried calling blink no joy i got to the site and filled out the form and created an account which it seems you have to do to send a “help me” request so yeah i did that thing toonext thing is i get an email from blink saying they got my request and someone would contact me “soon” argh i waited a day and finally put a call in to amazon again because the 30 days return policy is coming up fast and i needed help i finally got some customer service person and was told that my option is returning the set i was seriously disappointed 😢 and frustrated and finally decided to give up on my dream of a technology driven home and agreed with the cs during all this process i’m told i have to pay to return this blink 4 outdoor camera setup but  hey the really awesome part is that i can choose any mail out service i want so there’s a bonus…now i just got confused as well as frustrated and my immediate insightful response was “huh” and worse yet “ um what’s going on” i’m told that the computer the cs is using is showing only 1 return and i have to pay to get it back to them and i have 2 days to do it remember that 30 day return thing is still ticking awaybad luck me because next day is pouring down rain and windy like crazy now i’m in wheels so in order to get to the post office i have to wrap my wheels in a gigantic plastic garbage bag to protect all the electronics and then i have to wrap myself in all my rain gear and got busy making my way to the post office dodging huge puddles and cars hitting those same puddles and swamping me like i’m invisible even though i’ve got lights on and an ugly bright yellow rain poncho going on lol 😂 i’m laughing crazy and just soldier on and i got the thing done and got a real good receipt too because i was told i’d get a refund for that i finally get home make the call to the call center and am sent an email while we’re talking and i send off a picture of the receipt showing everything about the order and delivery date and everything is the way i was told to do it the guy on the other end says “ ok i got the receipt and it’s clear and i’ll call you back in a few days about your reimbursement “and once again my amazing insightful response system kicks into high gear and i go “huh” meanwhile the cs person was asking a bunch of questions about whether i have received other orders and i finally say “ can’t you see my account” and he says no and something about computer issue or some such and i’m still dripping wet and i still have to unwrap my wheelchair and myself and my insightful response system rears it’s head and i say “whatever dude” and i hang up feeling pretty good because i have the emailfor this product it easily connected to my existing blink doorbell setup and i was not too difficult to get it connected to my blink network be really careful with what you’re trying to do with this camera set it’s not made for my kind of setup where you can move the camera around to where you mostly think you need it until you decide on a permanent installation it’s probably for a setup where you have already decided where to permanently install it’s front heavy so even though the frame looks boxy and squared it isn’t and if it isn’t permanently installed from the start the cameras will fall forward and it will start notifying your app constantly that there’s motion in your camera view when it’s really just falling forward and it takes a picture of what it sees as it’s falling the image quality is decent but blurry when the camera is falling forward so that you can’t really make out what you’re seeing unless you manually do a walkabout of the location that you placed the camera i’m unsure of how to rate the motion detection since it was the thing in motion and it isn’t clear the inability of the camera to stay up even though it looks as if it should be stable is possibly because the camera probably makes some kind of internal movement during activation of picture taking but again and most importantly i’m not a tech genius so i couldn’t figure out why it keeps falling over it comes with a plastic key for battery installation or changing and some other plastic thing but i couldn’t figure out what the other plastic thing was so that means that i probably needed help and i couldn’t get the help i needed it didn’t pick up sounds very well the app i used is the blink app and i’ve used it for years with my doorbell so that app is easy to use and understand but you need to “play with it” to figure out most of the advanced settings during my attempt to figure out this camera setup and the problems with instability of its outer shell i was offered during initial setup to connect to something called “sidewalk” that appears to use the nearby cameras of neighboring other users in your area but i interpreted that as a breach point for camera access so i refused that offer but others might think that is a good thing so you’ll have to decide for yourself when the time comes despite the shape of the camera shell it is highly unstable during use if it isn’t used as a permanent installation be really aware of this problem otherwise you may believe that it’s useful for moving it from place to place until you determine the best locations and view overlap to get the best protection for your location and application the cameras have major drawbacks and some plastic parts have no apparent use as they don’t show up in the pictures in the ads or on an existing installation in the ads the customer service response for my situation was an email saying they got my help request and would contact me soon without any timeline for the response and to date i haven’t heard from blink as i am writing this beware of the return policy that requires you to pay for the return shipping as the size and weight of my return cost 2800 and change for my situation there wasn’t any option to return via a amazon drop point at whole foods even though the box is pretty compact and well suited to shipping good luck and i hope that this comprehensive review will help someone avoid the pitfalls i’ve experienced with this blink 4 outdoor camera set and barely responsive customer after care