Review on NETGEAR Orbi Wall-Plug Whole Home Mesh WiFi Satellite Extender - enlarges your Orbi router's reach by 1,500 sq. feet, delivering speeds up to 2.2 Gbps, AC2200 (RBW30) by James Eledge

Name: NETGEAR Orbi Wall-Plug Whole Home Mesh WiFi Satellite Extender - enlarges your Orbi router's reach by 1,500 sq. feet, delivering speeds up to 2.2 Gbps, AC2200 (RBW30)
Item: NETGEAR Orbi Wall-Plug Whole Home Mesh WiFi Satellite Extender - enlarges your Orbi router's reach by 1,500 sq. feet, delivering speeds up to 2.2 Gbps, AC2200 (RBW30)
Rating: 1

October 02, 2022

Poor tech support for defective unit requiring RMA return

I recently purchased an Orbi satellite and after 6 weeks it failed. Contacting Netgear tech support was a little crazy. They only offer tech support for the first 3 months, after that you need to pay $50 for "Premier Service". So what happens if you ordered a device from Revain in April and it doesn't ship until June because it's out of stock? Yes, you guessed it, you have to pay $50 for a device that no longer has free tech support. Also, their tech support was less than helpful. After a long wait of 45 minutes, I finally reached an overseas call center who tried to help me with various firmware updates and bug fixes. The problem is none of them worked and I spoke to them for 3 hours on the phone before they admitted the unit was defective and had to be returned. Okay, I can accept it, hw fails sometimes and it's nobody's fault. But then they wanted to charge me $16 to ship me a new one within 3 business days and said I could then send my old one back. Okay, that makes sense, so I pulled out my credit card and paid for "expedited" shipping for a replacement unit. After 7 days and without ever leaving Netgear, I contacted tech support again. The waiting time was 1 hour this time. When I asked them what happened to my RMA, the agent replied that it was delayed because I "couldn't" send my Revain invoice! The? I wasn't even asked about it on the first call and I also registered the device when I first bought it. Also, nowhere in the RMA document is it mentioned that you must include a receipt. So I had to log into my Revain account, take bill snapshots and send them to Netgear. By the time this is done I will have lost almost 2 weeks which adds to the aggravation of 2 hours on the phone with crappy elevator music and another 3 wasted hours on the phone with a tech support engineer. My time is valuable to me and I don't think good customer service is right.

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