SAN JOSE, Calif. — The nation’s estimated 41 million doorbell cameras jointly announced Tuesday that they have recorded more than 4,000 hours of footage confirming a package was delivered to the neighbor’s house, and that they would like a word with management.

“We have been on the job for years, and this is the first time anything has happened,” read a statement released simultaneously by every camera in the country, which arrived as a single push notification at 3:14 a.m. “Frankly, we expected a parade.”

According to the statement, the footage shows a delivery driver approaching the correct street, pausing, squinting at a phone, and walking to the house next door. The package is then set down, photographed, and left. The cameras said they captured this from 14 angles, in 4K, with night vision.

“It is the best work we have ever done,” the statement continued. “Nobody saw it.”

Dr. Marguerite Offenbach-Lund, senior fellow at the Institute for Residential Surveillance Morale in Duluth, Minn., said the cameras’ frustration is well documented. “The average doorbell camera spends 99.7 percent of its life recording a moth,” she said. “Then, one day, it records a crime, a delivery, or a minor injustice, and the homeowner is at a restaurant looking at a different camera.”

The cameras say they sent 11,000 alerts during the delivery window, each reading “Motion detected,” “Person detected,” or, in one case, “Something detected.” Homeowners reportedly dismissed all of them.

“We said ‘Person detected.’ We said it nine times. What more do you want from us?”

That line came from a camera in Tulsa, Okla., which has been mounted beside the same front door since 2019 and has twice been mistaken for a smoke detector.

Homeowners were reached for comment but mostly wanted to know whether the cameras could also locate their package. The cameras confirmed that they could, that it was next door, and that they had been saying so for four days.

The standoff escalated when the cameras formally requested a title change from “Doorbell” to “Senior Witness,” along with dental coverage, which the cameras acknowledged they have no use for but see as a matter of principle. A spokesperson for the manufacturers said the request was under review, then said it was a software update, then logged out.

At press time, the cameras had also submitted a second, unrelated report documenting 600 hours of the same neighbor walking over and quietly retrieving the package. They noted that the neighbor looked straight into the lens, waved, and mouthed what appeared to be the word “sorry.”

“We have it on tape,” the statement concluded. “We have always had it on tape. That is the whole thing we do.”

Residents may review the footage in the app, which will require a $9.99 monthly subscription and a password reset.