Orbi RBK763 - Armor and Parental Controls NOT WORKING

[Enginerd27]

I purchased this junk in November of 2022 at Costco.  It included 1 year of Armor and I purchased 1 year of Parental Controls.  I have had the system running correctly with both services for maybe 2 months of 6 months I have owned it.  I am NOT NEW to networking or router setup.  My prior network was custom built (ipfire, triple NIC server and APs in mesh) and ran great.

I have about had it with this junk.  Forget getting Pihole to run correctly, I cannot even get the services I paid for to run properly.

Today alone I followed the following procedures:

1. Verified I am on the newest firmware.

2. Backed up the router settings, deleted Orbi app from my phone (Pixel 7), reset the router, restored the backup, reinstalled the app and tried to setup Armor and Parental Controls which neither will activate now.

3. Backed up the router settings, deleted Orbi app from my phone (Pixel 7), reset the router, setup the router from scratch, reinstalled the app and tried to setup Armor and Parental Controls which neither will activate now.

4.  Backed up the router settings, deleted Orbi app from my phone (Pixel 7), reset the router, setup the router using the Wizard, reinstalled the app and tried to setup Armor and Parental Controls which neither will activate now.

So now what?  Customer support runs out after 90 days and I have to pay additional money to these jokers to get help with software and services that don't work?  How is this a viable business model?

I should have read more reviews before I bought this system. It is absolute junk and I will NEVER purchase any Netgear hardware again.

[Enginerd27]

I tried the same steps again.  According to my account, both Armor and SPC have valid subscriptions.  SPC until 1/10/24 and Armor until 11/10/23.

This is the 3rd time the services have stopped working but this time they won't restart.

Error message for SPC:  Smart Parental Controls activation has failed.  Please try again later.  (code: SPC-ACT-FAIL)

Error message for Armor:  Failed to Subscribe

Any way to move forward with this?  Do we really have to pay Netgear more money to talk to their support to get their buggy software/firmware to work properly?  I am guessing this will be a $450 experiment (so far) with the expense of an additional support contract to fix something on their end.

[Barleymagrew]

I'm in total agreement. I'm in the UK and the orbi parental control is not fit for purpose. It is absolute crap! I'm reporting netgear to the UK consumer protection people. It's a total expensive rip off. And netgear nowhere to be seen!