Terrible Customer Service from a Great Security Camera Company

[VA2Lman]

I have just spent hours chatting and online with India ARLO Customer Support NOT US ARLO Customer Support. For being an American company and not being able to talk to someone that speaks proper English is absurd. 

I have been a long time customer of ARLO and think their cameras are the best. Recently ARLO sent a notice about the End of Life (EOL) for some of the cameras. Even though the cameras are less than 4 years old ARLO said they won't support them due to EOL. I have never had a company after only 4 years say they will stop supporting their product after only 4 years. However, ARLO did try to appease their customers with a EOL coupon for 50% off cameras. 

So I went on their website and decided to purchase their latest model camera, the Pro 5S. Unfortunately, they were out of stock in the white color.

Now for the gist of this message. I tried to find a contact number for ARLO and could not find one, anywhere...  So, I went on to the website to chat with someone but instead spent a lot of time "chatting" with ARLO's virtual assistant trying to get the idiot bot to understand what I wanted. That I wanted to talk to someone and not a virtual assistant.

Finally, after many attempts at trying to get the virtual assistant to connect me with someone I was connected with a real person to chat with. But as usual trying to explain the problem via chat was taking a lot longer to accomplish than talking on the phone. The chat person directed me to the phone number to call Tech Support, they could not give it to me because I had to go through my phone app. Apparently the only way to get the phone number is by going to the app on your phone and selecting one of the cameras that you have setup and the phone number will pop up. This is crazy, I should not have to go through all this to get to customer support/tech support.

I called the phone number and talked with tech support, I explained why I was calling but because of the language dialect issues had a hard time getting the person to understand what I wanted. I told the person that I wanted to purchase the Pro 5S model camera in white but it was out of stock, I asked if I could get the EOL coupon date extended or purchase the camera's and have them shipped when they were back in stock. He told me he did not think so but would connect me with the sales team. When the person on the sales team came online I had to go through the same spiel that I went through with the Tech guy. The sales person went to ask someone on the “next level” and came back and told me no to both options. I told him I wanted to spend over $500 on their product and he said NO.

 I asked to have a supervisor call me because I could not believe that they were willing to lose a sale over an expiration date or the cameras not being in stock. He said a supervisor would call me within 24 hours. What kind of customer support is this? 24 hours?

The supervisor called me the next day and told me the same thing, that there was no way to extend the date of the EOL coupon even though I wanted to buy the cameras that were out of stock. I hung up on him and submitted the following back to ARLO when they sent me an email and asked for me to Update my Support Case.

“””Update Your Support Case # 43549969

This is probably a waste of my time but here goes...

Your Virtual Assistant sucks, it took me more than 30 minutes of back and forth, with the virtual assistant and multiple retries to get connected to a person to discuss my issue. Finally the virtual assistant connected me to someone but I had to be transferred to the correct department.

I told the person on the line that I had an End of Life coupon and the cameras I wanted were not in stock and asked if I could pre-order and wait for them to be delivered and was told there was no way to do that. Then I asked if the coupon could be extended and again there was no way to do that. I asked to speak to a supervisor/manager and was told someone would call me back when they were available, so I left my contact info.

A supervisor called me back the next day and I went over what I wanted, and he said there was no way to preorder or extend the coupon. I had told both of them that I wanted the 5S cameras because of the longer battery life and dual band WiFi.

After the supervisor told me he could do nothing for me I got upset and told him there were multiple other camera companies that I could replace my current ARLO cameras with and I would start looking for replacements.

I have had ARLO cameras for a long time and this is the first company for any product that has sent me a letter saying their product has reached EOL after only 4 years. I understand that technology changes but 4 years and the cameras are EOL....really. Back to the supervisor, I don't understand how he cannot do anything for the customer, when I worked for a large company as a supervisor/manager we had broad capabilities to satisfy the customer but that is not what happened here. There should have been a way to either allow the customer to pre-order or extend the coupon date until the product was available. I have been happy with my ARLO and in the past have recommended them when friends and neighbors ask about them but now I have to rethink that.

As for your virtual assistant, like I said, it sucks. Why don't you have people try it out from home and see how long it takes to get an answer for a question. I have better use of my time than to try and get a computer to understand what I am asking. If you really want to improve customer service, then provide a phone number from the get go and not have the customer waste their time trying to get help from a computer.”””

After being denied the chance to purchase the Pro 5S cameras I decided that I should buy replacement cameras for the EOL cameras and take advantage of the EOL coupon. I ordered 5 Pro 4 cameras and used the EOL coupon for the 50% off.

When I returned from vacation I received two emails from “Marc” at ARLO, no last name, no phone number, saying after further consideration they would allow me to purchase the Pro 5S camera’s when they were back in stock and I would have to contact customer support and have the 50 % difference credited to me. These emails were sent to me on July 5th, the day after the coupon expired.

The Pro 5S cameras were back in stock so I called ARLO sales support and had just as bad an experience as I had the first time I called ARLO support. I asked if I could return the 4S cameras which were still in the original box unopened and purchase the Pro 5S cameras, after talking with 2 people who said NO even after I mentioned the email from “Marc”, I asked for a supervisor to call me and again was told I would get a call within 24 hours.

As it happened, I was away from the house when the supervisor called me. He left a message that he called and told me to call customer support, no name, no phone number. I called the next day and had to go over the reason I called with 2 more people and I was getting nowhere so I asked for a supervisor again and was told I would get a call within 24 hours. Do you see where this is going?

I called ARLO back again and asked for a supervisor, the person went away and came back saying that a supervisor would call me back sometime that day so I hung around the house and waited. Finally the call came, I talked with a supervisor and explained everything but was told that what I wanted could not be done even after I pointed out the email from “Marc”. I finally hung up because it was like talking to a brick wall.

At this point I had spent hours trying to purchase 5 cameras worth about $1100 retail and did not want to waste any more of my time. I will use the 4S cameras even though they are not the cameras I originally wanted.

When the time comes to replace the security cameras I will find another company that provides real time customer support in the language that I speak without having to repeat myself when the support person does not understand what I am asking. 

Some takeaways…

ARLO’s Virtual Assistant Bot needs a lot of work, there should be a way to get to a real person without having the VA Bot try to decide what the customer is asking,

There needs to be an easier way to call ARLO for support, post a phone number on the webpage,

When a supervisor calls and leaves a message, leave a name and # to return the call, or call back again, don’t make the customer call back and go through the process all over again.

And don’t keep adding new case #’s, I had 3 or 4 created for this issue, the first ones were closed because I did not respond fast enough plus I don’t know why they were closed because the issue was not solved. Case #’s 43549969, 43584228, and 43586715 were all created for the same issue. Does the outsourced Tech Support company get reimbursed by # of cases?

Anyway, I think I have said enough. Dealing with ARLO has been a nightmare and I have never had this much trouble getting support for a product, EVER. And this from a company that I used to promote to my friends and neighbors when they were looking for security equipment.

[JamesC]

VA2Lman,

II apologize for the poor support experience. I will pass your feedback and the details you've raised here along to the management team for further review.

JamesC

[azguy5050]

There is a management team?  I don't believe it.  I thought the inmates were running the asylum.  That's about as bad of customer service I've ever read about.  If I was publishing a book, this example would be in there.  JamesC, you are our only hope to get through to those that need to Wake up.  So many upset customers, and not just a little, have you read some of the facebook groups?  Arlo is getting trashed in all of them.  Incredible that no one but you seems to care.

[garyrlake]

Agree 100%.  Had an agent see a butterfly and blamed the problem on something totally unrelated. 

Terrible service...just terrible.

For the record, don't tell an engineer has got an electrical problem and his charger will "ruin his batteries".  OMFG sound like my grandmother in the vacuum tube days.  The rating on a USB is a MAXIMUM not how much it's pumping into the device.  USB is USB.  Only different is the power rating.

Total waste of time.  Done with Arlo.  Case was 43902386

An hour of my life I'll never get back.  Oh well onto Eufy and Ring reviews to read