Ring Lets Buyers Believe They Can 'Set It and Forget It,' Says Plantiff

Plaintiff Alison White outlined a three-step process, with images from the Ring website, supporting her assertion in her second amended complaint Monday (docket 2:22-cv-06909) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles that Ring and retailer Home Depot duped consumers with false advertising claims about the functionality of the Amazon company’s Jobsite Security 5-Piece Starter Kit (see 2211220037). The "misrepresentation" that the properly configured starter kit will contact authorities automatically if a home's security is breached occurs in the third step describing the process for opting in for “24/7 peace of mind,” White contends, quoting the Ring website: “Be it break-ins, smoke, or medical emergencies, professional monitoring gives you around-the-clock protection.” If a customer confirms or can’t answer after an alarm is triggered by the Ring system, “We can request emergency response to your home,” the screen shot from Nov. 22 shows. White expected that when she wouldn’t be able to confirm that an emergency response should be sent, that Ring would automatically contact authorities to dispatch them without her involvement, she said. In each instance, her alarm was set to the “away” setting when triggered, and White was unable to confirm whether to send authorities, she said. “Defendant Ring failed to contact authorities,” she said, and Ring representatives later told her Ring Alarm Pro doesn’t possess that capability. “Reasonable consumers would interpret the statement that, ‘If you confirm or can’t answer, we can request emergency response to your home’ to mean exactly what it says -- Defendant Ring can call authorities when the user is not able to confirm whether authorities should be dispatched or not,” White said. Calling the Ring notice “deceptive,” White said Ring is leading purchasers to believe they can “set it and forget it,” by being enrolled in 24/7 professional monitoring and relying on Ring to dispatch authorities when they can’t respond to a Ring prompt asking whether authorities should be sent, she said. “Defendant Ring made these misrepresentations without any intention of performing the auto-handle service, because it did not possess that functionality in the first place,” she said. Ring and Home Depot maintain that the kit was never advertised promising the functionality White describes, and that she agreed to arbitrate any disputes when she bought the product (see 2211300049).