Use Caution When Purchasing Older Arlo Devices Online

[KachinaShadow]

I've been working with L3 Support for quite a few months on an issue with my Security Lights sending notifications even when muted...this started right when the Arlo wide "not sending notifications" issue was resolved earlier this year.

L3 Support had eventually attributed my problem to something being wrong with my bridge and was going to send me a new bridge, unfortunately they are no longer available, so I began searching for one on Ebay. I purchased a brand new one, but the Arlo servers would not recognize it, even though my router did, so it was unable to be onboarded. I found another in a new three-light set but the results were the same.

After discussing this with L3 Support it was determined that, even though these two bridges were brand new, they had never been plugged in and onboarded to update the firmware and the original firmware in them was so old that the Arlo servers no longer recognized it...basically they were "bricks". I did try onboarding the new lights that were in the three-light set, to my existing bridge, and they had the same issue of being too old. Interesting that even though the bridge and lights were within the EOL date, Arlo had removed any recognition of older firmware which then makes anything that's been on a dealer's shelf for a long time unsaleable.

Fortunately, I was able to get credit from both sellers after showing them the text from L3 Support as to the onboarding problem and I did find another seller who was able to successfully onboard the bridge he was selling and update the firmware which he sent me pics of. 

Of course, after all of that, when I received the new bridge, onboarded it without issue, but found that L3 Support was wrong...it did not solve my "lights sending notifications when muted" issue ☹️

Bottom line on all of this is that if you have to buy an older no longer made Arlo device online, you need to make the seller aware that if it's unusable, you may have to return it unless they, or you, can actually onboard it successfully.