Customer/Tech Support

[TiredOfArlo]

When I first bought Arlo, tect support was great.  Now you can't get any help, they moved their tech support offshore with people that know little.  They now have disabled features that used to work, you need to enroll in a monthly subscription just to make your cameras work as they did before the mandatory subscription.

Do not buy anything from Arlo, they nickel and dime you to death, and tech support will not help you unless you pay them - garbage.

[AlexWhi]

Arlo was a product of Netgear until 2018, when it was spun off. Netgear had developed the original app experience and devices in-house. I would not be surprised if only a minority of the software engineering team made the switch and the system is being handled by a different team.

The entire European business was sold to the alarm company Verisure in 2020, who now handle all customer service for the region. They treat the Arlo products as free gifts included alongside their “real” alarm systems and they are not a support or sales priority for Verisure.

[Floyd94]

Agreed.  The cameras are garbage. 

[StephenB]

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@AlexWhi wrote:

Netgear had developed the original app experience and devices in-house.

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Just to clarify this bit - Netgear acquired a startup (Avaak) back in 2012.  Avaak had developed VueZone camera+hubs, and an associated app.  Netgear further developed that technology and launched the first gen Arlo camera in 2014.  

I think it's fair to say that Netgear developed Arlo (VueZone cameras were quite different), but they weren't starting with a blank slate.

The spin-off was about 8 years ago now, and the current app "experience" was first introduced over four years after that (early 2023).  The driver behind the current "experience" was the home security system, so not directly linked to the spin-off itself.  (And yes, there are several aspects that their UX team missed).

What the spin-off did enable (for better or worse) was the transistion of the business model to SaaS.   IMO, Netgear could not have done that.

[Edinburgh_lad1]

Indeed, we've had 3 years of the new user experience and I can't understand why it's still, it seems, in the 'developing' phase: issues are plentiful and new ones are steadily being added on. It seems like a never ending project being developed in someone's garage. Very painful and exhausting experience altogether, and it feels very disrespectful by the dev team not to finally get their act together. 

The whole system now feels dated in terms of features and user control, especially in comparison to what the competition offers. Some practices are very questionable (legally and ethically - not just with the EOL products in the US but also in terms of having to have a subscription to access customer service, which, as suggested by reviews and comments on this forum, seems dreadful anyway - it didn't say anywhere on the packaging or during the process of purchasing that I would need a subscription to access customer service), and the only thing that is on the up is the subscription cost (and the positive reviews for the app on the Google Play store actually, so that's two things!).

Netgear had a different business model for Arlo. Their USP was the free storage - specifically advertised on their packaging - with the option for users to pay to get some additional features. Of course, Arlo moved away from this USP, and it seems Anker/Eufy has adopted it and is capitalising on it, as well as on providing some additional features for free (like the AI thing), while Ring is the dominant one in the subscription area in the UK.

@StephenB what do you mean by Netgear not being able to have transitioned to SaaS? Couldn't have because they didn't want to/were unwilling to, or didn't have the resources?

[StephenB]

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@Edinburgh_lad1 wrote:

@StephenB what do you mean by Netgear not being able to have transitioned to SaaS? Couldn't have because they didn't want to/were unwilling to, or didn't have the resources?

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Unwilling.  FWIW, "business model" is more than a mindset - objective measures built on the model drive the business decisions the company makes. Those measures determine what projects get funded, what teams get more reqs, and who gets laid off. 

Netgear's business model is selling hardware widgets.  Every year or so a new high-end widget shows up, and last year's model moves to a lower tier (generally with a somewhat lower price).  Each model has a short shelf life - Netgear routers generally go end of life 3 years after launch.  That includes some quite expensive stuff - routers retailing well over $1000.  Managed switches last a bit longer - 3 years after end of sales.  They also can be very expensive - $5000-$7000.  And it is strictly enforced.  Support contracts for older products are not available.  If Netgear still owned Arlo and applied those policies, we'd be dealing with a much longer EoL list (and it would be worldwide, since they wouldn't have partnered with Verisure).   

They've never sustained cloud services for their non-Arlo products - stuff pops up for a couple of years and then gets completely dropped.  There are lots of examples - ReadyCloud being one of many.

One business reason this happens is that the margins for SaaS are much slimmer than they are for hardware.  SaaS only works if you can really scale it, and that requires committing to it long term.  The low margins means SaaS never scores well on the measures companies like Netgear use.  Generally it ends up viewed as a cost of doing business, and not the core business.  So whenever things get tight, it's the first thing that gets cut.

The goal of the spin-off was clearly to allow Arlo to pivot to a service/subscription revenue model.  One quote from the time is

“In the future, we plan to continue to introduce new categories of devices and services that will connect to and complement the Arlo platform, and we expect that our operating results will be impacted by these releases,” the company said in its prospectus. “We also believe we can grow our subscription-based recurring revenue stream by improving current Arlo Smart service features and introducing new premium service features to our growing user base.”

Note that this also has resulted in lower camera prices.  Typical cost of an two-camera Ultra system was about $650 back in 2019.  Right now it is $350.  And two Essentials would cost about $130.  For comparison, Netgear's flagship mesh router in early 2019 listed for $400.  Their flagship mesh router today lists for $1800.

I am also an Netgear superuser, and don't take this assessment as dumping on Netgear.  I'm just saying their business drivers are very different, and ultimately not compatible with Arlo's.  They saw that back in 2018, and decided to spin off Arlo.  If they hadn't done that, I think they would have discontinued Arlo by now (as they did with ReadyNAS and the media streamer business they started up in the early 2000s).

[Edinburgh_lad1]

Thanks for the insight.

This stuff about dropping products and short terms support is very much favoured by big corporations, Google being at the forefront. I've read an interesting article (can't remember the source, but it was a reputable one) explaining how things work behind the scenes, using Google as an example: it's about developing a product and getting a promotion asa result of it; big money behind that. Support then is costly and so products are retired.

In Europe, the focus is more on using existing equipment for as long as possible, and also re-purposing it, given the climate change and the impact of e-waste on our beautiful planet.

My favourite is a German router manufacturer called Fritz!. For example, their Fritz!box 7490 is 13 years old and still receiving the latest firmware updates (the latest one is from Jan 2026; they usually release an OS update once a year, but it's a quality update that works by the way, dear Arlo). Fritz! Is very popular in Germany and gaining popularity in the UK, too. They offer quality products, too. Who uses such old products as the 7490? There will be, for example, small companies out there that don't need anything faster but care about security. Netgear has always been a 'fast fashion' company in the IT area. 

I know the above example of the 7490 is unusual considering how quickly IT equipment ages, but Fritz! actually use it for marketing purposes.

Anyway, I'm digressing.