The technical support is horrible. I have reached out twice to solve connectivity issues with HP Laptops and a Lenovo Laptop that connected fine before. Moreover, I had to call again since there were connectivity issues with Nest products.
In both cases, the technical support was very inneficient. They told me that they were in The Philippines and because it was 10 pm there (it was 10 am here), I was not able to escalate the issue.
The customer service agent, for the second call was Nur, agent 178550. I have no issues with overseas customer support, but they should at least work during the customer's working hours. Otherwise, the support is compromised.
If you have the opportunity, let's buy another brand or stick to their old, tested products, that requires no support. This company is not ready for introducing cutting-edge technologies.
Re: Limited Technical Support from the Philippines
You should know that this community is essentially a user-to-user venue with some input from a small band of Netgear techies.
Most of the answers come from fellow users who have no connection with Netgear. They just have a lot of collective experience and are familiar with the sort of problems that turn up here.
If you want "official" support then you should go through the right channels.
The technical support is horrible. I have reached out twice to solve connectivity issues with HP Laptops and a Lenovo Laptop that connected fine before. Moreover, I had to call again since there were connectivity issues with Nest products.
Hard to see how any of that tracks back to a Netgear product, which may explain why you had a hard time with the support people, but you could try it in this community.
Re: Limited Technical Support from the Philippines
I am not sure what your role here is, but this is a community forum so unless you can contribute to the solution, you should not try to tell users how to describe their problems. If you have nothing else to do, you might consider getting yourself a social media account or a pet.
In any event, I solved the issue by returning the RAX40 router and getting a Google WiFi router. Now, it is just plug and play, with far more and better coverage, and speed.
More, I have used the Google Customer support before, and it is a delight to work with!
I have reached out twice to solve connectivity issues with HP Laptops and a Lenovo Laptop that connected fine before.
Let me guess: These HP and Lenovo Windows systems have some Inhell wireless 802.11ac adapters which connected before to the old (non-ax) router but did not wanted to work with the new 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 router? A problem that hit many new RAX customers. And in fact not a problem of Netgear. Much more it took much to long until the updated Intel wireless drivers became available with the vendors driver update sites, and finally Windows Update. Fairness where fairness belongs: This was most likely not a Netgear support problem - you should have challenged HP (good luck!) and Lenovo (good luck!). Or follow the Wi-Fi 6 AX routers discussions here in the community.
Moreover, I had to call again since there were connectivity issues with Nest products.
Not sure what you expect during a phone call, even if forwarded to L2 or L3. There can't be much more than gathering information about the involved systems which fail to associate, or deassociate unexpectedly. Here again, there are multiple layers involved: Netgear as the system integrator, Lantiq (Intel) as the provider of the radio firmware and wireless chipset of the RAX40, Nest/Google as the maker of the Nest devices, and finally a similar chain with chipsets and drivers. No way there would be some pinpointing and immediate fixes.
Yes, I'm happily in front when it's about criticizing Netgear consumer division - but here I can't follow. These are tpyical interoperability issues which should be expected when jumping on a new (and pre-standard) technology.
Re: Limited Technical Support from the Philippines
In the spirit of fairness, I have four laptops (mine and my wife’s, both personal and company-owned). The guys from HP and Lenovo were prompt to send us the driver update within minutes. Moreover, two of my laptops connected immediately, and the service from HP and Lenovo was outstanding, as opposite as Netgear.
Moreover, the issue of the wifi connection dropping twice or three times a day still was there. The guys from Netgear asked me to enter each individual Nest Camera and use port forwarding, and then I lost the connectivity with my wifi smoke detectors. However, the Netgear guys always kept blaming third parties companies, as if the router was not supposed to be used with third party devices.
To be fair, the customer service from Netgear is horrible. I refuse to believe that you are launching a new technology and did not test it with popular items such as Nest. They claimed over the phone that they only tested their own wifi cameras! It is unbelievable.
In the spirit of fairness, they should launch a product when it is ready. In this day and age, they should stop blaming others when products do not work.
They have a planned release for the Mesh routers using WiFi 6 by the end of the year, hopefully they will be better prepared, and will train their customer service people.
I cannot wait to have the new Google Wifi 6 when it is launch perhaps next year, I will not mind waiting, I am sure that these guys will launch a plug and play product again and their customer service people is more than capable to provide a decent customer support.
Bottom line, it is better to wait, get the technology when it is ready, and never use NetGear.
Re: Limited Technical Support from the Philippines
Well, late 2018 when we (no, I'm not Netgear) started some Wi-Fi 6 adventures with Netgear and two business class vendors, the Windows OEMs as well as Inhell had no clue that many of their wireless adapters completely fail to associate with the Wi-Fi 6 pre-standard devices. Took us days and days to go through Inhell creating the awareness that they have to look into it and fixing things. Even in spring 2019, none of the big Windows OEMs had these drivers in their downloads. I'm happy to hear that they are aware now in summer 2019.
While I'm a big fan of (some) Google hardware products - but can't fully agree with your support experience (probably related to the fact that Google does not officially offer many products here in Switzerland) - their online assistance and information available is top of the line, even better than many business class vendors.
It's not a secret: Netgear consumer business unit has a major problem with the firmware feature-function-benefit-quality on the consumer devices. And they seem to have a bigger problem with collecting and concentrating the related information available in the net (not only this English language community). There is a lot going on behind the scenes, but we're not fully heard yet in San Jose. Very different, the Netgear small business unit does perform much better for our needs and expectations.
PS. Just before you ask: I'm training and handling four Flat Coated Retrievers for the hunting season on battue and retrieving birds, ducks, rabbits, few foxes, and participate on invitation during some intrusive birds population control actions.
