Reolink, your apps are terrible and your support even worse

user_780297176101116

I first opened a support ticket around six months ago complaining that my 1000Mbs fully wired POE doorbell was suffering from a low speaker volume and communication lag. 15 emails and 6 months later no one has managed to help me. Below should be an eye opener for Reolink management.

First problem: Low speaker volume at the door bell.

It turns out several app versions were implemented without the ability to control the speaker volume at the door bell. I live on am average busy road but the sound of passing cars in the background can often make it impossible to hear the door bell speaker. The visitor must keep their ear 2 inches away from the doorbell in order to hear. They mishear often or don't hear anything at all when a car goes past. That combined with a delay/lag problem of around 2 seconds makes 2-way comms impossible. So I asked support how I can raise the volume. They initially made me remove the latest version as of 6 months ago (can't remember the version number), and then directed me to a a place where I could download an earlier version with the ability to control the volume. They told me I can increase the volume by sliding this scale up/down:

Initially, I was confused. This volume slider appears to be a volume control for adjusting MY (my app's output) volume not the speaker's! Where does it say that this control is for the speaker??? To me, support failed to understand my problem. I told them, this slider appears to not be moving. Actual fact. On my Galaxy Note 9 and an Android tablet in the house, the slider seemed stuck. Not responsive. It looked like it simply was not implemented. In any case, I was adamant this was not the solution any way because this looked like a "local" volume control.

Only now, 15 emails and 6 months later, I got a new phone and discovered that this volume slider does move. Though the touch response for this control is terrible, it misses most of the time.
So, the support person was right but failed to convince me that this stupidly implemented volume control was for controlling the output volume of the doorbell speaker.

Who on earth implements such a central doorbell setting in this way? The volume control does not even show up until you click "Tap to talk". This kind of control should've been implemented on the Settings page along with Chime volume/chime settings, not here!!!

Reolink. Your apps are terrible and your ability to help users with problems are even worse. You need serious help. It seems to be a "Chinese" thing that the hardware is always good but the applications poorly coded and implemented. Why does it have to be this way?

The whole solution still suffers from a lag/communications problem. 2 seconds in unacceptable. If anyone knows what I can do about this, I'm listening.

Thanks and sorry for my tone but you really need to learn a lesson here. The way you implemented that volume control is not right. Even more proof it's not right is that, I have 3 devices, and on each of them I can control that volume separately. That again, is not right.