Tea
Storage? I am Storage!
We bought a Netgear Arlo security camera system the other week.
The good news: the machinery is outstanding. Small, neat, beautifully engineered. Expensive, but I've never minded paying for class. Great battery life, very well thought out.
The bad news: the associated app and website aren't just bad, they are not even fit for purpose. Several times we have been on the point of sending the whole bloody lot back and starting again with something else. Some examples:
The website, incredibly, requires Flash to function correctly. Hello? Welcome to the 21st Century Arlo. FMD, there isn't even going to be any such thing as Flash as of next year - Adobe are finally junking it. But Arlo's spiffy new website uses Flash. (Yes, Arlo - AKA Netgear, AKA Cisco.)
The package we bought comes with a 12 month subscription included. There is a discount code you type in when you register on-line. It's on a card in the box the unit ships in. But it doesn't work. You type it in and the system rejects it. Every time. Eventually, Arlo support (getting on to them is a whole different horror story, see below) instructed me to do as follows: (1) Ignore the "free" 12 months I'd paid for. Instead, sign up for a free 30-day trial. Follow that process all the way through, including entering your credit card details. Finalise that account setup. Restart the app. Then, close the account you just set up. Then, open a new account, follow the same steps only this time paying for 12 months subscription. Finally, enter the discount code to get your $129 back. Farnarkle me! Mind you, the tech support guy wasn't able to describe all that in any sensible way up front, he had to stay on-line with me all the way through telling me what to do next at each step. What a massive waste of his time and mine.
This brings me to their tech support. No email. No web-based form, nothing except a "live chat" button. Press that, wait 20 minutes: nothing. Try again, wait another 15 minutes, then spend the half hour it took to register my system with their tech telling me what ridiculous things to do at each step. Total (including time wasted looking for the support email address or equivalent) about two hours. Blood pressure? Don't even ask.
Arlo has massive problems with notifications. When first installed, it used to go crazy, sending multiple notifications over and over again. Worse, the alert light on your phone (similar to the one that lights when you have a new SMS and your phone is in standby) stays on forever. No matter what. The only way to clear the alert light is to reboot the telephone.
Then they released a "bug fix" software update. Yep, it no longer spams you with multiple notifications, nor does the alert light stay on all day. They don't send any notifications at all. None whatever. No light at all either. What is the point of a security monitor app which doesn't actually tell you if there is an alarm? Ans: none. It is carp with a capital K. Is it just me? Nope. A quick web search results in page after page of people experiencing the same sort of frustrations. These issues go back years. They are seldom the same - Arlo, it seems, tries to fix each major notification system issue by breaking some other part of it and making a different problem, usually just as bad as the first one.
Lastly, speed. The system takes forever to get organised. On a fibre-optic connection with 100% reception, it still takes so long to wake up when you start the app that the phone screen often greys out before you can actually do anything (such as turn a camera on or off). Given my excellent connectivity at this end, this can only be server problems on Arlo's part.
It's a damn shame. The hardware is so good. The app looks good. It's sensibly designed and laid out. In fact, it does everything except actually work.
The good news: the machinery is outstanding. Small, neat, beautifully engineered. Expensive, but I've never minded paying for class. Great battery life, very well thought out.
The bad news: the associated app and website aren't just bad, they are not even fit for purpose. Several times we have been on the point of sending the whole bloody lot back and starting again with something else. Some examples:
The website, incredibly, requires Flash to function correctly. Hello? Welcome to the 21st Century Arlo. FMD, there isn't even going to be any such thing as Flash as of next year - Adobe are finally junking it. But Arlo's spiffy new website uses Flash. (Yes, Arlo - AKA Netgear, AKA Cisco.)
The package we bought comes with a 12 month subscription included. There is a discount code you type in when you register on-line. It's on a card in the box the unit ships in. But it doesn't work. You type it in and the system rejects it. Every time. Eventually, Arlo support (getting on to them is a whole different horror story, see below) instructed me to do as follows: (1) Ignore the "free" 12 months I'd paid for. Instead, sign up for a free 30-day trial. Follow that process all the way through, including entering your credit card details. Finalise that account setup. Restart the app. Then, close the account you just set up. Then, open a new account, follow the same steps only this time paying for 12 months subscription. Finally, enter the discount code to get your $129 back. Farnarkle me! Mind you, the tech support guy wasn't able to describe all that in any sensible way up front, he had to stay on-line with me all the way through telling me what to do next at each step. What a massive waste of his time and mine.
This brings me to their tech support. No email. No web-based form, nothing except a "live chat" button. Press that, wait 20 minutes: nothing. Try again, wait another 15 minutes, then spend the half hour it took to register my system with their tech telling me what ridiculous things to do at each step. Total (including time wasted looking for the support email address or equivalent) about two hours. Blood pressure? Don't even ask.
Arlo has massive problems with notifications. When first installed, it used to go crazy, sending multiple notifications over and over again. Worse, the alert light on your phone (similar to the one that lights when you have a new SMS and your phone is in standby) stays on forever. No matter what. The only way to clear the alert light is to reboot the telephone.
Then they released a "bug fix" software update. Yep, it no longer spams you with multiple notifications, nor does the alert light stay on all day. They don't send any notifications at all. None whatever. No light at all either. What is the point of a security monitor app which doesn't actually tell you if there is an alarm? Ans: none. It is carp with a capital K. Is it just me? Nope. A quick web search results in page after page of people experiencing the same sort of frustrations. These issues go back years. They are seldom the same - Arlo, it seems, tries to fix each major notification system issue by breaking some other part of it and making a different problem, usually just as bad as the first one.
Lastly, speed. The system takes forever to get organised. On a fibre-optic connection with 100% reception, it still takes so long to wake up when you start the app that the phone screen often greys out before you can actually do anything (such as turn a camera on or off). Given my excellent connectivity at this end, this can only be server problems on Arlo's part.
It's a damn shame. The hardware is so good. The app looks good. It's sensibly designed and laid out. In fact, it does everything except actually work.
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