Nest Doorbell Key Replacement

[Andreas Mbili]

Inthe unfortunate event that your Google Nest camera or doorbell gets stolen, we can help. When you report your camera or doorbell stolen, you can get a replacement with no additional cost, if you qualify.

The good news was that when I complained that plastic was peeling from the front of my Hello doorbell, Nest offered a replacement. The bad news is that after removing the otherwise functioning doorbell from my Nest home structure, every attempt at installing either the replacement or the original doorbell failed with an NC009 error while stating it was adding the camera to my Nest account. From my router logs, the camera successfully connected to my WiFi and got an IP address. The issue seems to be with leftover cruft in Nest's backend database that causes the addition to fail.

Contact with Nest support resulted in my being directed to do a variety of useless tasks. These included moving the doorbell closer to my router (how do I move a wired doorbell?) and reconfiguring my home network (which has been working fine with the existing Hello doorbell for years).

After asking to escalate this problem to engineering, the latest response I've received tells me that I need to reconfigure my Nest account to add a new home structure. Then I should install the doorbell into that structure and move all of my existing Nest devices to it as well. I have 2 thermostats, a temp sensor, 4 protect smoke alarms and two cameras on my account. I believe I will have to remove and reinstall each device, including the smoke detectors that are 15' up on the ceiling, but all of the configuration information will have to be set. Also, my Nest subscriptions for the 2 cameras will have to be updated. That seems like a lot of work to push onto a customer when the problem is at Nest's end.

TLDR - This also works if you blow away all (and just) your Nest devices from your existing home, and then begin adding back starting with your freshly reset doorbell. Thanks to LEO in the thermostat/nest protect department! You don't need a new nest home structure, you just need an EMPTY home structure. Just be sure to remove from Nest first before you reset each item. Saves any subscriptions associated with the primary Nest home/structure

Thanks so much for your post! My whole house is Nest and Google so this was going to be a big job! I too was unable to do a one-off replacement of my nest hello (for the same reasons - peeling). And since I had reset the old doorbell, that also would not reinstall. I followed your post's advice and created a new home structure. It worked, but I was concerned about my subscription for nest aware, my energy rewards, and my alarm monitoring which is going away in December, but even so... First call to the camera section was a huge waste of time. That guy, who shall remain nameless, was fixated on me switching all over to the new home structure, but we got interrupted because somewhere in the process he decided I needed to pay a professional installer and transferred me away! Booooooooo! After that hellish experience, I was prepared to just write off the subscriptions, but wanted to see what would happen with my energy rewards, so I called the thermostat department and explained the whole thing to them. THIS GUY!!!! LEO!!!! SO AWESOME!!!! Really knows his stuff. He understood that the problem has to do with previously installed items and the assist function, but couldn't narrow it down to what equipment exactly caused the conflict. It wasn't the cameras 'cause I removed them first and tried to reinstall. Anyway, instead of moving everything over to the new home and risk losing subscriptions and energy rewards as well as needing to reset and move every other cotton picking smart home product from my existing GOOGLE home to a new GOOGLE home, LEO suggested blowing away all the nest products from the existing home, resetting the doorbell and starting with that. Then reset and reinstall everything back into the new home. Worked like a charm. Subscriptions and energy rewards are intact. The only hitch so far is my monitoring isn't showing up, but the Brinks connection to our equipment is now pretty tenuous, so I will need to call and see if I still need to cancel or if I can enjoy their outrageous month to month prices until the cut us off in December.

I wish I had tried to install that doorbell intermittently as I removed various groups of equipment to narrow down which assist item was causing the issue, but I was tired. I've poked that doorbell about 25 times by now and I'm just relieved it's finally installed in the correct home structure! THANK YOU LEO!!!!!!

Create a temporary second Google Nest "home/structure". Then add your Nest Hello doorbell to that second "home/structure". If that works, remove the doorbell from the Google Nest app (thereby removing it from that temporary second "home/structure") and try adding it back to your original "home/structure". Then delete that second temporary "home/structure", which would now be empty.

I'm only suggesting this workaround because in other posts, customers have used this to get around the "assisting device" error that many customers have encountered when adding a new Google Nest device. I don't know if it will work, but it would certainly be less disruptive than moving EVERYTHING to a new "home/structure" and trying to get your Nest Aware subscriptions renewed on the new "home/structure".

I wasn't advised to do that but did try it as one of many attempts to get it working. I was able to install the new doorbell in the new home structure, but after deleting it, the doorbell could not be added to the original home. Also the doorbell being replaced can no longer be added to the original home structure. I have since created yet another new home structure and added the new doorbell. I am not looking forward to redoing all of my existing devices.

That's too bad. It's really absurd that because Google Nest will not clean up some back-end cruft on their servers, they instead are asking you to reinstall everything. And you might encounter other issues--like the persistent "assisting device" error--while reinstalling everything else.

Thanks for reaching out. Sorry for the late reply. I'm glad that it worked for others. For those who are still having the issue after the troubleshooting please fill up this form with all the needed information, then let me know once done.

Before emptying my home, I did add the doorbell to a new empty home using the nest Wi-Fi and it worked fine. Its important to remove and reset the doorbell before attempting the installation in your real nest home.

When I emptied my existing Nest home, I actually missed removing the connect for my door lock and discovered that after the fact. Fortunately that one reset with no problem. Apparently if you try to reset a temperature sensor before you remove it, you risk bricking it. Use the white settings page that shows all your devices in a list instead of the blue home page to make sure you have removed everything from Nest.

At first I thought I could go the route others have gone and perform a DIY battery replacement, but the Hello is basically glued together and not intended to be opened up easily. I cracked the faceplate trying to pry it off and that was when I decide to just order a whole replacement doorbell, which is what brought me here.

3a8082e126