Many issues with Arlo at the moment, worth keeping?

[ThinkFlight]

TLDR; I am seriously considering returning the video doorbell and the 4 pack of arlo 2 ultra cameras to Costco tomorrow.  Arlo seems to be be having serious system issues that are NOT being reported accurately on their status page.  After experiencing these issues and dealing with Arlo's customer support, and where my doorbell camera is not sending notifications or video but the chime is working; I'm reconsidering the entire arlo product line as a solution for me.  Apparently a serious flaw in coverage will occur if you either lose internet and or they have system outages.  I'm contemplating switching to EUFY which saves the video locally and offers cloud backup as a addon.

Full story; 

I picked up a video doorbell just a couple of days ago on the 27th. There seems to be some serious issues at Arlo right now.  I could never get the app to verify my iPad, or iPhone with the 2fa process when you go to "trust" the device it fails saying there was an error.  Fortunately you can, after the required 2 attempts via push and sms, finally select "don't trust" and skip this part.  The video door bell worked fine after this.  Adding the chime was problematic as it took multiple attempts as it kept trying to update the firmware and then would not reconnect the network but I FINALLY got it working after about the 5th attempt.

At this point I reached out to tech support via the provided phone number on Costco's site (though it was kind of hidden in Costco's site).  The line says its 24x7 yet when you call they close at 6 pm PST... (go figure... Red flag number 2).  The person I spoke with informed me that there was an outage for this and they were working on it and gave me a ticket number saying they though it would be resolved in a day.  Today 29th I tried again - no luck.  I called Tech support again, and the person this time told me to take a screenshot of the error and update the ticket.  Which I have done.  Still have not herd back.

Moving on from this I decided to try installing the Arlo ultra 2, 4 pack cameras that I picked up for my folks.  Once I got to my folks place we tried looking up the document for the Arlo 2 Ultra's via their website document page and BEHOLD - Access restriction xml error on their own support page for this specific camera...  tired my phone, on cellular, no luck same thing.  I called tech support yet again and spoke with a rep who could get it to work "on her side" and she sent me an email with a different link pointing to a different spot on their site that DID work... go figure.  She told me to update the ticket she created for this and include a screen shot.  When I tried to submit the update for the ticket through Arlo's own support portal page - it ERRORED THERE as well.  SO she had me get a screen shot of that and send an email in to them to the normal "customer support" email address she gave me.  What a joke.

From here we hooked up the required smart hub, and after several attempts it finally updated the firmware and was added to the app. (oh and their iPad's and iPhone's have the same issue with 2fa authentication - so clearly its not restricted to my internet and hardware.  Once we got the smart hub working we tried adding a camera.  It gets stuck at "name the camera" part.  Here it errors out saying it can't name the camera and to try again - which goes through the process of pressing the sync button on the camera and trying again... long story short I've tried just about every thing I can think of to get this to work - between all 4 of the cameras (same issue for all of them) and pressing the sync on the base and the camera .. no joy.

After all of this I got home and noticed a package on the door - though It was odd that I didn't get a notification, so I opened the app (and had to log in again wasting time due to it trying to force their non functioning 2fa and doing the "don't trust" thing again just to get it to log in again) and once open I noticed I didn't have ANY notifications for hours... yet a few people went in and out the door since then.  No video, no notifications, nothing.  I also noticed at 5:04 pm PST it recorded the last event and nothing past that.  That was about the same time I went to my folks place to try to set up the cameras. 

So I tried connecting to the cameras live feed and it fails...nothing.  Last image it shows is the one video and event at 5:04. However if you walk up to the doorbell it's LED lights glow like its recording - and if you press the button it still chimes the wireless chime adapter.  Just no video or alerts.  Its now 2am PST and the doorbell camera is still not working - the battery (which was at 5:00pm at 90% is now down to 45%.  My guess is that trying to connect to the internet for video all this time is draining the battery.

Over the last couple of hours I've been digging into this site and others to see if others have had similar issues.  Apparently the 2fa issues has cropped up numerous times over the last several years.  As has the naming of the camera issues.  What really stood out to me though is that there are MANY complaints here, on Arlo's customer support site that their customer service has seriously degraded since about late February of this year.

After all of these issues, and seeing the repots of declining customer service, I'm reconsidering the entire arlo product line as a solution for me.  Apparently a serious flaw in coverage will occur if you either lose internet and or Arlo has system outages.  At this point I'm contemplating switching to EUFY which saves the video locally and offers cloud backup as a addon for about the same price, perhaps a bit less.  But with their systems it appears that you would while I might not get the notification if there was a system outage or my internet was out, I WOULD still be able to have a local copy of the video once I was back home.  This, I think is going to be a big deciding factor for me after seeing the reports of Arlo's CS worsening and having the issues I've had over the last several days.

[ThinkFlight]

Well this made it easy for me...  Clicking on "do not trust" got me to the main menus as others have posted - however I'm still not receiving all the notifications and if anyone else in my family opens the app, it closes this one making me to log in again on my app and go through the whole "trusted/not trusted" issue again.  Got a hold of a CS rep today - they confirmed this is an issue and has been for several days, yet its not showing up on their own STATUS page as an issue...  Further he said this will happen (the being booted out and having to log in again and go through the process and finally hit "do not trust") due to the device not being trusted as part of the 2 factor authentication (2fa).

My doorbell cam needed to be reset, and resynced to get it to work again... and recharged as it was down to 36% after being stuck trying to either connect to there servers that were down or something along those lines... either way the unit failed to respond for several hours and rapidly drained the battery.

I'm taking back all the Arlo devices to Costco today.  I'm not dealing with this any longer.  I am very unimpressed with Arlo's customer service, responses and the fact that they have known outage that's NOT listed on their own service status page... what a joke.... Switching Eufy. 

[JamesC]

ThinkFlight,

I apologize for the poor experience. We're looking into reports of the issues you've described here and will provide an update as soon as we have more information to share. I will review your support ticket and provide more information as soon as I know more.

JamesC

[ThinkFlight]

Well, I switched to EUFY.  The difference in customer experience has been amazing to compare.  First thing I did was call them (their number is listed on their site, big change right there) and spoke with someone at length in tech support about what I needed to look at and what would work best for my setup I wanted.  He spent about 40 min with me on the phone, got me all the info I needed and passed me on over to a sales rep to finish the order.  Got the cameras and already have them setup and running... ZERO issues.  Oh and the doorbell works way better. 

If your unhappy with Arlo and their customer service as I was, there are better options it seems.