What is the best way to get Netgear support?

krazydav wrote:
That being said, are you saying that by calling there is better support?

When you use email it may be up to about a day or so before you get the first response from support. When you call the wait is hopefully short so it takes less time before a case reaches the point where it is escalated (if that is necessary).

krazydav wrote:

As far as the Secure Diagnostic Mode it would be good to to hear a proper explanation of why remote access needs to be granted for such a long period of time. I was only told to enable it so they could escalate the case even after I asked why that was necessary. I never received a proper explanation until I spoke with level 3. The T&Cs clearly state that ALL data will be accessible by support. For me this required removing any data that I feel is too sensitive/personal to allow support to see if for any reason curious minds wanted to pry. Paranoid, perhaps, but I don't think so.

Support techs that remotely access systems support a range of NETGEAR products and with a huge installed base they always have some cases on the go. Depending on how busy they are they may be able to look at it quickly or it could be a business day or two before they can look at a system and even then depending on the problem it may be a quick fix or involve quite some time in troubleshooting and diagnosis. We have techs working in different time zones around the world so depending on when the case is escalated, who it is picked up by and at what time, there can be some difference in the time things take. If you take the system off secure diagnostic mode, a L3 tech will likely deescalate it and ask for it to be re-enabled which creates further delay as it could be a while before the case is picked up, you are contacted, the case re-escalated and then a L3 gets to looking at it. When a problem is resolved they move on and look at the next case in their queue.

krazydav wrote:

I will say that as soon as Level 3 contacted me, even without much asking the gentleman addressed many of my previous questions and pointed me in the right direction very quickly. Just getting to that point was slow, non productive, and frustrating since I am not an expert and trying to gather as many clues and symptoms as I could to figure it out on my own. I should state that by trade I do some troubleshooting in FW, HW, and SW.

Thanks for the feedback

krazydav wrote:
Speaking of already known. I understand the difficulty, but there is clearly a disconnect between engineering and the support group. Twice now I have had two issues that have been known by engineering but not by support. I don't want to minimize that challenge, because I know how difficult it can be communicating a dynamic situation. But, it is an observation.

For common issues there is communication to the support team about how to handle it. Our Level 3s communicate with the engineering team in situations where they need assistance from them and share knowledge amongst themselves and with other levels of support. There is a delicate balance between time spent communicating and time solving cases, fixing bugs, developing new features etc. We regularly evaluate our processes and see what we can do to improve.