How to Prevent Doorbell from Being Stolen: 5 Easiest Ways
It’s tempting for thieves when they see your valuable smart doorbell, typically worth of 100 bucks or even several hundred bucks, on your front door.
They may take the risk of being caught and steal your Ring, Nest, SkyBell and other brands’ doorbells.
So how to prevent your doorbell from being stolen? What to do if your doorbell is ripped off by the thieves?
You can try the below useful ways to secure your video doorbell from thieves.
AND
you’ll get a step-by-step guide to recover your loss if your doorbell is stolen.
Quick Navigation:
#1. Top 5 Ways to Secure Your Doorbell from Being Stolen
#2. What to Do If Your Doorbell Got Stolen: Step-by-Step Guide
How to Prevent Your Ring, Nest, SkyBell, ect. Doorbell from Being Stolen: 5 Comprehensive Ways
Video doorbell camera theft is not rare nowadays. Good news is that you can take precautions to stop someone from stealing your smart doorbells.
Here we list 5 effective doorbell anti-theft ways so that you can secure your doorbell from thieves as much as possible.
Way 1. Attach Your Doorbell to the Stucco
Way 2. Protect the Video Doorbell Power Cable
Way 3. Use a Grid Box to Secure Your Doorbell
Way 4. Back up the Videos or Data Regularly
Way 5. Purchase Insurance for Your Smart Doorbell
Way 1. Attach Your Wired or Wireless Doorbell to the Stucco
One of the easiest ways to theft-proof your video doorbell is to make it hard for thieves to rip.
Use screws in the package to attach your doorbell to the stucco. It would take quite a bit of force to rip it out of the wall.
Thieves like acting fast. So if he or she notices that it would take extra time or efforts to steal the doorbell, the bad guy may skip your home and seek another easier target.
And typically, you will receive the instant app push notifications when someone presses or approaches the smart doorbell.
Upon receiving the notifications, you can open your app on your smartphone, and shout at the thief. That might freak him or her out.
Way 2. Secure the Power Cable of Your Smart Video Doorbell
What is the best way to stop a thief from simply unplugging my Ring or Nest doorbell?
Yes, some thieves would cut the power cable to disable your doorbell so that they won’t be caught in the act by your video doorbell camera.
You can try 2 solutions to secure your video doorbell’s power cable from getting cut.
Solution 1. Opt to zero-wire video doorbell. By choosing battery operated wireless video doorbell, you will not worry about that the thief cuts the cable since there are no wires to cut.
Solution 2. Conceal your doorbell‘s power cable. You can follow the steps to hide the power cable of your plug-in wireless or PoE doorbell.
Step 1. Use the cable clips to run the video doorbell power wires along the wall’s edge, eave, and other hidden places.
Step 2. Paint the power cables and clips so that they will fit your home décor perfectly.
Step 3. Run the power wire through your doorway and then plug it into your outlet inside your home.
Don’t forget to route the cable through the top instead of the bottom of your door.
Way 3. Get a Grid Box to Prevent Your Doorbell from Getting Stolen
After you’ve attached your doorbell to the front door or wall, you can order a small grid box to cover it.
A metal box with grids won’t block your doorbell’s “eyes”, while keeping your doorbell out of reach by the doorbell thieves.
Make sure the grids are smaller than your doorbell.
Avoid using glass box to theft-proof your doorbell, since the reflection of the glass would cause images whiteout or videos being washed out.
Our team has DIYed a grid box using some small iron bars, and added a lock. We also use the double-sided tapes to stick the doorbell on the bar.
Your visitors can still press the button. However, no one can take your doorbell out from the box without the key.
The grid box we’ve made is similar to this one>>
Way 4. Remember to Back up the Videos to Your Computer or Cloud
Your video doorbell would store the important motion-triggered videos to the SD card or the cloud.
If you opt to video doorbell without cloud subscription, remember to download the videos stored in the SD card and back up the data on your computer or Google Drive.
If you choose the smart video doorbells with cloud storage, you don’t need to worry about losing the important videos. You can still log into your cloud account and back up the videos, even the doorbell got stolen.
Way 5. Insure Your Smart Video Doorbell
You can purchase insurance for your smart video doorbell. If your video doorbell was stolen by the thieves, you can still get your money back.
After you’ve installed your video doorbell, go and buy insurance for it at once. Insuring your video doorbell will guarantee payment should a property got stolen.
You can get a quote here in terms of insuring your video doorbell.
You can share the above top 5 theft prevention tips with your family and friends.
If you have other useful ways to stop doorbell from being stolen, please leave them in the comment below, we will add your tips in this post here.
Hope you will never suffer doorbell theft. But if your smart doorbell got stolen, you can consider taking the below A to Z guide to reducing your loss to the greatest degree.
#2. What to Do If Your Smart Video Doorbell Got Stolen: Try This Step-by-Step Guide
Luckily, doorbell companies like Ring, Nest, etc. will provide doorbell theft warranty and guarantee.
If your Ring or Nest video doorbell got stolen, the company staff will send the replacement item to you.
But you’ll need to take the steps before getting the replacement doorbell.
Step 1. File a police report immediately.
Step 2. Take pictures of the damage but don’t touch the scenes since the police would collect the fingerprints of the thief.
Step 3. Log into your cloud account and download the important videos to see if your video doorbell has caught the thief’s face.
If yes, you can give the videos to the police so that the police can catch the doorbell theft with a higher chance.
Step 4. Ask for a copy of the doorbell theft, and then contact doorbell company staff as soon as possible. The company staff will send you a free replacement doorbell very fast.
Step 5. If you’ve purchased the insurance for your doorbell, you can contact the insurance company to get the payment.
Remember to prepare the necessary document such as the insurance contract, your ID card, the copy of the doorbell theft report, etc.
What does a metal grid box looks like? I can’t find an image or where to purchase one anywhere.
Hello Jennifer, we used some iron bars to make this grid box by ourselves and added a lock.
Your visitors can press the doorbell but cannot take it out without the key.
I’m not handy with do-it-yourself projects but would like a grid box for our Ring doorbell. We’ve had two of them stolen so far. The Ring mount is plastic, so the guy just has to use a screwdriver or other tool to quickly pry the doorbell from its plastic base. Would you be willing to build us one of your custom grid boxes? I’d be willing to pay a reasonable price for it if so.
My Ring Doorbell has been stolen twice by the same guy. (I only know that because of footage my another camera. Ring replaced it the first time but won’t the second time.
If the thief actually installs a Ring Doorbell elsewhere, it wipes out everything you had in the cloud. Pretty idiotic, huh?
I’m still fuming…
Ironically, even though my two stolen doorbells (stolen by the same guy) were installed elsewhere within hours of being stolen (so Ring KNOWS where they are!!!), they won’t give the rightful owner this information without a police report and a subpoena submitted by police, which takes 60-90 days to acquire.
If you have the basic protection plan you should be able to catch a video of the perp. The doorbell cam starts recording before the perp approaches the doorbell. After you obtain the police report you should submit everything to RING to get a replacement.
yea, police aren’t going to collect finger prints for an item worth under $100.