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Omg! NETGEAR WAS MY SECRET SANTA!!!!
Reddit Secret Santa
NETGEAR recently participated in Reddit's Secret Santa gift exchange. In the Reddit gift exchange, users of Reddit are matched with random participants to send and receive a gif...
i thought this was a great christmas product until i found out netgear partnered with disney to screw us out of a previous free product. i used to get all the premium features from disney circle for free, but since the last orbi firmware update, i know have to pay $5 per month for the same services. If you are a parent and and a circle owner be warned, all the controls you previously had for a one time fee will now require a monthly subscription. Time to look at non netgear/disney alternatives!
Do you mean to say if you have a disney circle box that you cannot use its features? I would have thought that buying a cirlce box is still an option as you don't have to turn on Orbi circle parental controls? Though I thought this was a bad addition. I would have much prefered if they had enhanced their built in parental controls as for instance ASUS has in their routers.
yes. We had the Disney Circle box prior to the Orbi purchase. And until the last firmware update everything was fine. However with this firmware update, the Orbi system auto detects the presence of the Circle Box and forces you to enable the Circle parental controls through the Orbi. This of course requires you to start paying $5 per month to access the bulk of the Circle parental control features.
We now have a worthless $99 Circle Box, which we are attempting to get a refund for through Disney or an exception from the monthly subscription service (not holding my breath for either). A better option would have been for Netgear to allow you to leverage the Circle Box if you already had one to avoid the monthly subscription fee, but of course that denies Disney and Netgear a reoccurring revenue stream, so you know screw the customer.
At this point, unfortunately, I have to see about a replacement for the Orbi, which has been a huge improvement in our home wifi, so that I don't incur another needless monthly fee. Maybe if enough people voice their concern we can get Netgear and Disney to find a better solution.