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Forum Discussion
gfrassmann
Jul 16, 2025Aspirant
Support issues with very expensive Orbi Products
I own a Netgear RBE971 and three satellite RBE970s I have for almost 3 days been going back and forth WITH SUPPORT OVER AN ISSUE WITH THE MAIN ROUTER, WHICH IS THE 970 LAN PORT FAILURE! their initial request and actions that had me take more reasonable but as a trained IT professional with 40 years of experience, I can and have diagnosed failed ports on networking devices before they keep coming back with request to redo tests instead of addressing the issue of the ports do not link do not negotiate any speed do not work. There is no connectivity through them. I need to resolve this case yet I can’t get past the first level technician. My experience tells me never to buy another Netgear product again especially one of this price point. My initial purchase was over $2600 worth of equipment from them for a little more money. I could’ve gone to Cisco or a commercial company and gotten a mesh solution from their commercial line I believe I have been more than patient providing lots of information that was redundant and unnecessary. My experience tells me that they’re just looking to waste time to avoid having to do an advanced RMA and hoping I will give up . I was extremely pleased with these products and their performance, and they solve the problems. I was having with wireless and wired, networking in a large house within an addition up until I experience the failure and have had to deal with the nightmare of their support after experiencing the nightmare of Netgear support I couldn’t recommend this product to anybody even if you gave it away for $26 a unit.
9 Replies
- gfrassmannAspirant
I need to correct something I was using voice to text. The main router is the 971 that is the one with the land port failures the three 970s are fine because these are Netgear black which can only come from Netgear and I purchased them directly from Netgear. I had hoped that this would actually be a reasonable support experience.
- FURRYe38Guru - Experienced User
What devices are you connecting to the LAN ports?
Which LAN ports are failing? ALL on the RBR?
What CAT# LAN cable are you using? CAT6A STP is recommended.
If you'd done all troubleshooting and ports seems to be failing with out any resolution, I'd ask for a RMA return the unit. Ask about a cross shipping RMA,
- gfrassmannAspirant
Would love to return it under warranty to the place of purchase - that was netgear as the black models are only available from them. I used both cat 5 and cat 6 cables in testing using both another switch and a laptop to do the tests. All 4 ports on the RBE971 lan group fail to link and connect no matter what combination is tried including testing with manual configurations not relying on dhcp. The responses from
support so far seem to be delay in hopes i will go away, we keep repeating troubleshooting steps when basic connectivity tests all failed.
- gfrassmannAspirant
phone which resulted in a case number which has had multiple email follow-ups to get more information and redo troubleshooting steps
- FURRYe38Guru - Experienced User
I've passed this to NG. All we can do. Hopefully someone can reach out to you.
Please be patient.- gfrassmannAspirant
Received an RMA link this afternoon while working submitted for advanced RMA next day.
Thanks
- FURRYe38Guru - Experienced User
Hopefully they will get you a RMA set shipped out to you.