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One year factory warranty not useful when gated by 90-day phone support
My ISP claims that my netgear cable modem in faulty. I purchased it less than a year ago so I'm still covered under the factory warrenty. However, when I called support today they told me that my 90-day free phone support has expired and were happy to offer me a range of farily expensive options (most more costly than a new modem). What I was not offered was a means of handling the support case over e-mail. When I did figure out how to submit an support request via support.netgear.com, all I got back is a form letter with troubleshooting steps. There's no means of uploading, for example, a screenshot of my modem's power levels. There doesn't seem to be any facilities in place for an semi-interactive e-mail support process given that all the e-mails I get from netgear on the topic are marked "DO NOT REPLY" (thanks, netgear).
I'm wondering what good is a factory one-year warrenty if it's gated by 90-days of telephone support. All I'm trying to do is establish if my modem really is faulty and if so get an RMA before my 1-year warrenty expires. If not, then I have something to go back with to my ISP to get them to come to my house. During this period of when internet access isn't really an option at home, I was very suprised by netgear's stance of this. Beyond the moral implications of denying an honest attempt at warrenty support, there are legal issue too I believe. I'm tempted to file a better business complaint over this.
- I ended up buying a different modem (different brand). The purchase price was less than the lowest cost phone support offered by Netgear 😃. I checked with their customer phone support before doing so. They will fully support their product via phone and other means for the full term of their factory warranty. Good bye Netgear, while your policy might have saved you a bit of money in the short term, it possibly could cost you more in the long run. There's absolutely no way I would every purchase a Netgear product for home use again and I'm now likely biased against your brand such that it could influence my behavior when provisioning networking equipment at work.
3 Replies
I see others have also wondered the same thing.
- I ended up buying a different modem (different brand). The purchase price was less than the lowest cost phone support offered by Netgear 😃. I checked with their customer phone support before doing so. They will fully support their product via phone and other means for the full term of their factory warranty. Good bye Netgear, while your policy might have saved you a bit of money in the short term, it possibly could cost you more in the long run. There's absolutely no way I would every purchase a Netgear product for home use again and I'm now likely biased against your brand such that it could influence my behavior when provisioning networking equipment at work.
