Paid for Armor, but impossible to activate - and NetGear refused to refund
On 6/24/20 I paid for Netgear Armor. The expiration date in my netgear.com account says "2021-07-23."
I also purchased Pro-Support.
When I log into my router, in the HOME area the Security button says "STATUS: NOT ACTIVATED." When I log into my Nighthawk app on my iPhone, Security says: "Expired - Off" and when I tap it, it takes me to the store where it wants me to buy it all over again. (Important note: my Nighthawk app is logging into the correct account, and I have attempted to delete the app and re-install it and reconnect it to that account.)
At armor.netgear.com (also logged into the correct account - I have triple-confirmed that), I have a list of devices that had been scanned back on Jul 30, 2020 and a lot of devices that were never scanned. However, this I believe was from a "trial subscription" that I was somehow given, that has expired. (I never asked for a trial subscription. I bought the product.) If I click on one of these devices it says on the Overview block, "Local Protection: Your NETGEAR Armor subscription has expired." If I click on the "hamburger" icon on the upper left hand side of this UI, and select "My Subscriptions," it says "It seems you have no subscriptions." And gives me two buttons: one "Activation Code" and one "BUY NOW."
Here is an important point: when I bought Armor I never got an activation code. They said one was issued, but I did not receive it. (It is NOT a junk mail issue.) I opened a pro support ticket to get them to re-send it. Over the course of 7 tickets and nearly three months of emails, phone calls and online chats, the end result is they said THEY CANNOT RE-ISSUE THIS CODE.
Without that code, I cannot activate Armor. Nor can I install BitDefender on the client side.
So I asked for my money back, and THEY REFUSED. They said the period in which I would have been due a refund has expired.
So I paid them for a service they are not providing, they have refused to even pro-rate or refund any portion of what I paid, and they keep closing my tickets when I try to get someone to resolve this.
On a side track: twice they referred me to a different team: BitDefender has its own customer support. BitDefender also could not help with this activation code, because they said they don't have access to Netgear's database where the activation code resides. But apparently Netgear doesn't have access to it either.
If there is some technical flaw that prevents Netgear from re-sending an activation code - that is a major problem they need to address. But until they address it, they should be refunding users who cannot activate the product they bought. But they are refusing to do so - and that is a business decision not a technical one.
I am not going to sit back and let them take my money. I'm going to fight them on this and I won't give up.
Re: Paid for Armor, but impossible to activate - and NetGear refused to refund
Hello legendmaker,
Thank you for taking the time to reach out and post a thread in the community. Someone should be reaching out to you for further information. Please check your community inbox when you have a moment.
Re: Paid for Armor, but impossible to activate - and NetGear refused to refund
Follow up:
I am unclear how the customer care works on the Netgear end, but I had paid professional Netgear support - and they are the ones that not only told me they "could not" send me the activation code I needed to use the Armor service, they also were the ones that said they "would not" refund the balance they charged me for the service they couldn't provide. And then they closed the ticket (again) as if that was that.
By posting here on the public form, someone else reached out to me, also presumably from Netgear support but apparently from a different team? I am not sure. But he seemed positive he could get me my refund, and he collected my information and said he'd get back to me. When I followed up he said Netgear customer support should have contacted me and I said nobody has. So he said he'd check back on that. Heh also promised me some free services for all my trouble.
I followed up several more times in the days that followed for status, and he never got back to me after that. Radio silence.
To be honest, the way Netgear treated me throughout this entire thing is criminal, and I am going to complain to the Better Business Bureau. No company can simply declare that they will not refund my money because they cannot provide me service due to their own technical problem. I had many tickets open, and had escelated to managers many times, and I was refused my refund on top of being refused service. That is thievery. De facto.
Before I had posted to this discussion board, I had already just contacted my credit card bank and disputed the charge. Strangely, the charge was not itemized on my credit card. I had purchased 3 items from Netgear that day: the RAX80 router for $399.99, the Antivirus Protection Armor for $44.99, and Netgear ProSupport for Home for $79.99.
Plus taxes, the total came to $568.28. But strangely, Netgear made two charges to my credit card that day: one for $135.29 and one for $432.99. So I had to explain to my credit card bank that the $44.99 that I was disputing was buried in there somewhere. Oddly I never heard back from my bank until suddenly today I got a note asking me to rate my bank on the dispute that was "resolved" on 9/16. Wait, what? I thought it was still an open dispute? I looked on my credit card statement online and saw no credit for $44.99. So I called the bank and found out that they did indeed award the dispute in MY favor, but because of the double-charge to my account they split the transaction into two smaller credits that add up to $44.99 plus tax.
So I now have my money back, thanks to my bank.
It is entirely possible that this is the reason that the person who was helping me here on the boards went silent - on the back end my bank may have already declared the dispute with Netgear, so the cart got ahead of the horse. But I don't know, because the stream of communication just stopped.
I would like to warn everybody about these perils. I cannot give ProSupport a very good mark either, which I paid for.
I would still like some kind of remediation from Netgear for all the trouble this has caused me.
Re: Paid for Armor, but impossible to activate - and NetGear refused to refund
Additional follow-up:
The customer support person who responded to the community message here has been extremely helpful, and has been the ONLY person able to DELIVER on mitigating my issue by giving me a free year subscription to BitDefender. The account is now active.
It's a curiosity that the best customer support I've received was here at the forum rather than the ProSupport that I bought and paid for with Netgear.
