Class action? Refund? Recall?

[rolandpeck]

To start I am 20 years vet in the IT world. I have never seen more incompetent, lazy, and all around useless support. I have delt with every major vendor you can think of.

I purchased two 4 packs last June. Around Nov 15 my credit card stopped working on their payment site. My credit card worked fine every where else. 3 weeks go by without me having service. Literally 15 calls later, all of sudden, I get an email saying my card was successfully charged.

Last week, I put in a ticket concerning 3 of my 8 cameras having pink images. They put me through the ringer about screen shots, video samples, serial numbers, receipts, etc. They have access to the system!!! They came see when the hub and camera was registered!!!

I finally got an email last night stating I had been approved for 1 rma. I need to fill some dumb forms outs, then they could processs the other 2 separately. Seriously !!!! It will be thanksgiving before I get the third camera back.

Now all of cameras are showing zero recordings. When you go into the library there are recordings. Well there are some recordings. It just so happens last night there was a disturbance outside and when I went to look at the cameras, the " last image screenshot" showed me a car on my street. But guess what???? There is not freaking video!!!!!! Obviously it picked up the car, because there was a screen shot. Where is damn video?????? My storage is well under usage. My internet connection is fine. So what is the damn problem?

Between the cost of these cameras and the subscription, I have paid well over a thousand dollars on some crap that now amounts to pile of paper weights.

Support couldn't be any worse if a group second graders answered the phone. My 5 year old understands, technology better than these guys.

Take a note from the big boy companies on support.

Xyz is not working

Test xyz.

Xyz still not working

Send the customer a new one!!! Fast!!!!

The end. Not two weeks of back and forth bs.

I am not a legal expert, but I am pretty sure the customer is entitled to timely support and to have the product function as it was intended to, in a cosistent manner. In particular when said product is well within its warranty.

So many of us have issues with hardware, and now they are writing **bleep**ty code to further compound the issue. I think there may be some grounds for a recall or refunds ( legally speaking). Any one more familar with the law, please chime in.



At this point, I would rather have my money back, put another grand in get a hard wired system. This is total bs.

[nicholshornlake]

I'm not fimilar with the law, but I know when I installed my cameras back in Sept. they all worked fine. Then came Dec. and they go and change everything for some ungodly reason. I've always thought if it ant broke, don't fix it. I don't even trust these cameras for security anymore. In my opinion whoever is the head honcho over all these screwups should be put out the door. It's very apparent these guys don't know what they are doing.

[rolandpeck]

I feel the exact same way. Late last night there was a unfamiliar car just sitting in my cul de sac with a person in it for an extended period of time.  I crack the blinds to see what is going on. 2-3 minutes go by,  I checked the cameras after a few minutes to see if they got a good video.

I open the app. Boom, on two of my cameras, the last image was the car. I go to library and the last videos were from hours before!!!!!!!

I can't even technically ( code wise)  wrap my head around of what is happening. LoL. If the last images were of the car, then they were triggered to record. 

What did it do with footage? This is insane. Sadly, what is going to happen is someone is going to get hurt or worse and sue. In today's litigious society they will proably win. Then maybe netgear will get off their a** and scrap this peice of **bleep** and give us our money back or get some programmers that don't release experimental software.

[Schorschi]

Try accessing your library from a browser rather than an app. The apps are known to not show all videos in all cases. Perhaps that way you can find the missing videos you're after.

Also, the video clip counters in the library are currently disabled.

Interesting to see which words get bleeped here, although, really I can only guess what words were bleeped. Ass is not one of them.

[AnderCam2016]

It's your right to complain but do you need to be rude about it?

[princejohn]

I totally agree I have 0 recordings on my camara and they email to me they are working on it.I get error message and cannot log in to my app without force stop on applications setting or totally reboot the app.I have calleld and they tell me it is only happening to Android phone.Bull I see it is happening to a lot of customersAnd when you call tech support they cannot help.If this continues I am going to try and get my money back.I must say when it is working I do like it but been having too many problems for what I paid for them.

[Fort_Knox]

---

AnderCam2016 wrote:
It's your right to complain but do you need to be rude about it?

---

You can try the "Report Inappropriate Content" function but it is usually to no avail.

[JamesC]

rolandpeck,

I see you have opened cases with support regarding the issue you are having with the red/pink tint on your cameras. Please continue working with the support team to resolve this issue.

We are aware that the camera alert counter is not currently showing accurately for library content. We are working diligently to resolve this issue and hope to have a resolution soon.

Are you still experiencing issues with content not showing up in your library? Were you able to check the library using a browser rather than the app as Schorschi suggested above?

Please let us know!

JamesC

[rolandpeck]

Yes I am. At this point. I have zero confidence in this system and for that matter any future netgear purchases. I am at the point mentally where I have chalked this up to $1000 lose.

I need some additional new equipment in my home. At this time I also need a new wireless router, however it will not be netgear, nor will any future equipment I purchase for customers.

Everything electronic breaks or has issues eventually. That is nature of the beast.

However,

Completely incompetent or unwilling tech support

Making ME PAY MORE MONEY to ship defective products back

Having to hound tech support for a fix, and still weeks later nothing !!!

That is completely unacceptable and unheard of for any other vendor I have dealt with.

[princejohn]

I called Arlo support today .Still getting 0 on my camara and now several times a day I get error message "must initialize fabric before singleton"asked to speak with a USA rep was told no they have a central office out of USA.Still no fix for the two problems I have.I told them if it is not fixed soon I want a refund for camarasNo answer.Claim the techs are working on the problems.Mean while takes me several trys to get into app.Totally disgusted.What a shame because when it is working it is a good product

[drshumes]

This information has kept me from making a big mistake. Need 10 indoor and 12 outdoor cameras. Between the issues the cameras seem to be having. Netgear not having it together on a cloud system. Not being able to store video locally without the cloud service. And now what seems to be terrible customer service, I will not be buying this product. A shame really. Still want a wireless home security system with local storage and reliable products with reasonable customer service. Maybe Apple will come up with something. At least their products work and customer service is reasonable. They are getting greedy to though. Probably only a cloud storage option even if they do.

[hauchinango]

I am pretty much in the same boat.  I am trying to get a refund, more than likely just take the hit.

[Arlo-Man]

I purchased mine through BestBuy with an extended warranty. I was able to return mine for a full refund.

[jult]

Hi Roland

> Everything electronic breaks or has issues eventually. That is nature of the beast.

You know, being another IT-world vet of around 30 years now I can honestly state that this is not true. I own several kinds of hardware electronics that are close to everlasting. Even some hardware of the recent decade has valid sustainable properties if its surrounding hardware would be of the same quality.

One on-topic example;

I have a zavio camera that turns out having superb hardware, both in electronics, build quality (strong and solid plastics) and stable software. Even though some software options are IE only, there are workarounds for that. It's still streaming RTSP just fine and storing videos onto (s)ftp after motion detection as well. Its infrared leds also seem to last at least another 5 years. I would honestly not be surprised if this zavio cam would still work well in, say, 2025.

And I have old computer hardware, just PC stuff, that's damn near unbreakable. Runs DOS on it, but still, it works to its full potential. And I have old stereo equipment (from the 1980s actually) that's also unbreakable. I have an amplifier from 1978 that still runs, I have cassette-decks with super electronics, for which I only once had to replace its record playback heads. No issues there. Just sayin'. It can be done.