Nest Cams in Your Home?

Bookings
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I have a few Nest cams in my home. I had a break-in once and I was able to get the cops to my house when I wasn’t there and they caught the guy.

However, during a shoot they are really handy for documentation after a shoot. Over the last few years I’ve experienced, people drawing on my walls but then trying to cover it up with a painting, a food fight in my kitchen, smoking a HUGE blunt in my living room, a staged fight in my living room where I needed to clean my upholstery and paint a wall, and lastly someone shot porn behind closed doors and against a clearly stated policy.

I was able to sort out all of this because I had documentation. For the porn I simply had the actors talking about how they would be paid via PornHub because they were standing in my kitchen where I have a cam.

I have the Nest cams posted clearly in my host rules.

My problem is that a lot of clients will unplug them or turn them around. I will reorient in some cases or in others if I feel like they are going to be ok I just leave it.

Does anyone else out there enforce a rule that their Nest cams not be tampered with? On my shoot today the client put tape on the lenses. Not only do I not want my cameras tampered with but I also don’t want glue on the lens.

This is my personal home. It’s filled with items from my childhood and I simply want to know if something was damaged how that happened. I feel like I have a legal and ethical right to enforce it. I don’t have them in the bathrooms or anything creepy. We’re talking about a kitchen, living room and spare room that’s used for hair and makeup. They are not hidden.

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I list, both in my listing here and in my direct booking contracts, that I have cameras and that they should not be touched, blocked or otherwise messed with.

My ceilings are 11ft and 16ft. The cameras I have are positioned in the upper corners so you can only reach them with a ladder. As a result I’ve not had anyone tramper with them.

If they did, that would trigger an immediate end of the booking.

Nothing good happens when people try to avoid them.

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Our cameras have intercoms and being able to tell someone to their face to “stop covering the camera and get off the ladder you didn’t pay for” is priceless.

People tend to relax their ethics/behavior when they think no one is paying attention. A personal touch to remind them can go a long way.

I would look into talk-back or intercom features on your next set of cameras, and in the meantime, I would add a notice to your rules that unauthorized tampering with security cameras in any way will result in a “camera review and recalibration fee” of at least $100 and may include additional consequences including the early termination of the booking.

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