I used many products in their early introduction and experienced different behaviors from the vendors when it comes to handling customer's feedback, trouble reports and complaints.
I'll give you two different and extreme examples, 1. LG Music Flow System and 2. Logitech Harmony which I both got when they were first introduced and still having those products.
- LG Music Flow speakers were great products, challenging Sonos in many ways, better audio, better price and more capabilities. When this product was introduced, the product had many "small" technical issues, but the LG team working on this product was "hiding", the same way as Netgear team is doing now. They were good, they were providing fixes every now and then, but no or very little communication with the customer. Not much information when you call support, and nobody is seen on the Community pages. What happened then, information about the issues -although really not that major- was spreading everywhere and LG then decided to discontinue the product, probably to save their face and protect the brand.
- On the other hand I also had the Logitech Harmony product range since the start when they had really so many issues, the product was hardly working, but the Logitech team was really active, the Support group was responsive (although that fixes were not provided fast) and they had a moderator or two handling the Community pages, giving feedback and forwarding customer issues and observations back to the development team, they were replying to -almost- all posts and that gave relief to customers and assured them that -at least- someone is really listening. What happened then? Harmony is now one of the best -if not the best- product in that product category. Very stable and extremely popular.
The key is Communication. You can't really hide and do the fixes, everybody knows that NG is a good company and that you will get the Orbi issues fixed in the end, I personally think that Orbi is a great product and have very little and minor issues in my setup! But if you really want to protect your good brand name and keep your customer base then you have to be available: listen and give feedback, and then it will be ok to make less releases as long as people hear from you and know your plans.
