Paying $139 To Troubleshoot Your $79 Router

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The Consumerist has an interesting story posted today that claims Netgear’s tech support told a customer to pay the Geek Squad $139 to troubleshoot a $79 router. Wait...what?!?

On the fifth and final call they suggested I call the Geek Squad (approximately $139 for them to come to our home) to trouble shoot it and if it proves the modem is bad they will send me a new unit at that time (which I only paid $79 to begin with).
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I have dealt with so many flaky bad routers its unbelievable. I don't know why these companies can't make a reliable product, is it so hard to make something that doesn't need to be reset every 3-4 days? There is not even removable parts in these things, so why are they so unreliable? Cheap is the only thing I can think of, if you router wasn't breaking every few years who would buy a new one!?
 
Usually the problem is they don't want to put a $0.25 heatsink on the chip to keep it from overheating and having connection issues.
 
Stupid #1: Buying a Netgear product.
Stupid #2: Going to GS to troubleshoot your Netgear product.
 
GushpinBob said:
Stupid #1: Buying a Netgear product.
Stupid #2: Going to GS to troubleshoot your Netgear product.
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Netgear seems to make a lot of little hardware mistakes. Like the WNDR3700 has one of the fastest WAN to LAN rates because it's one of the only consumer grade routers with a 680Mhz processor, BUT people have problems with it needing to be reset. Rather than fix that they come out with the WNDR37AV that supposedly fixes the problem, but what about those WNDR3700 users?
 
Unfortunately the majority of consumers have no knowledge of what they’re getting.
So they see these things advertised in their face and that it does what they need.
They don’t look at online reviews or specs because they’re not that interested in knowing these things.
Like someone told me before: “They don’t care how an engine works, that just want to turn that key on make it go”.
Knowing this, companies will make an economical (for them not you) solution designed to maximize profit and include many fancy keywords to entice a consumer to buy it.
Us [H]ard ones take our time to research for the right product or even roll our own.
 
all of my 2wires have crapped out about 3.
and only 1 of maybe 4 linksys.
 
DonInKansas said:
Routers are like printers. Cheaper to replace than fix.
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^ This - They're pretty much built with planned obsolescence, though I have to admit, I've had my DLink DGL-4100 and it's been running fine for far longer than I ever thought it would. Heck, there was even an updated firmware put out awhile back by the German division that actually fixed a few issues :eek:
 
DonInKansas said:
Routers are like printers. Cheaper to replace than fix.
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As are most items in today's disposable society. I remember a time not too long ago when a 20" TV would cost several hundred bucks - ok, so it was the 80's, sue me - and nowadays they're like $69 at Walmart.

Stuff is cheap not only in price but also in production quality these days.

I'd amend that list above to say:

Stupid #1: Buying a Netgear product.
Stupid #2: Actually contacting Netgear for support.
Stupid #3: Going to GS to troubleshoot your Netgear product.

That pretty much covers it... :)
 
I remember when we had people come in for this. We always just told them it would be cheaper to buy a new router. We sometimes were allowed to charge the company for a new one if it was still under warranty. (We never had the old models laying around at Best Buy)

The Geek Squad I worked in were all really nice people.
 
Ok, wtf, aren't there any I.T. people on this message board? Yes... it costs more to have someone come to your home to set a router up than it does to buy one. The dude could try to replace it yes, but 99% of the time the issue is a B.T.S.D. error (between the seat and desk). If you go to a mechanic to have your brakes changed, you pay more for the labor than the parts. Its the price you pay for convenience. After you figure in the cost of the labor paid to the agent and the vehicle and everything else they are not making much overhead anyway. If you guys had your way there would be no money in doing anything computer related. "Software should be free! Tech support and labor should be free! Hardware should be cheap!" Jesus christ...
You can, right now, go to best buy and get a badass N-router, your choice of three different brands, and a guy to come to your house and set it all up for $129. That includes the hardware and labor. When the people called the GeekSquad I'm sure that was offered to them as well. The consumerist is retarded, i think it is run by communists...
 
Oddly enough I've had my DLink DGL-4300 for a few years and have never had to reset it. Most solid consumer grade router I've ever seen. Meanwhile I have stacks of Netgear/Linksys bricked routers in my closet. Go figure.
 
HydroBudz said:
Oddly enough I've had my DLink DGL-4300 for a few years and have never had to reset it. Most solid consumer grade router I've ever seen. Meanwhile I have stacks of Netgear/Linksys bricked routers in my closet. Go figure.
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Exact same router I have had for years! Best router I have ever owned. I will never purchase a Netgear router for personal reasons.
 
I wouldnt let a geek squad tech near my house, as a lead tech at a large company with 3500 desktops and a team of 30 techs to support them .I am very unimpressed with tthe geek squads level of tech knowledge. and have interviewed several former geek squaders for positions. and wouldnt even qualify them for lor level techs.
 
veilv0x said:
Ok, wtf, aren't there any I.T. people on this message board?
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There's over 139,000 members on this forum and not a single IT person amongst us. Thank God you showed up to enlighten us! :rolleyes:

I'm pretty sure the point of the article and this thread is to point out the stupidity of paying a bunch of retards (The Geek Squad) to come fix a router that the consumer ALREADY knows is bad. They expect him to pay $139 bucks to validate a problem with a $79 piece of equipment. It's called a RIP OFF.

Netgear should send him a replacement unit instead of shuffling him off to waste $139 bucks on a service that he doesn't need. The consumer is not paying for convenience, he's paying for Netgears poor customer support and lack of willingness to support their own hardware. Comparing this issue to getting the brakes on your car replaced is about as retarded as calling The Geek Squad for anything.
 
gn0me said:
There's over 139,000 members on this forum and not a single IT person amongst us. Thank God you showed up to enlighten us! :rolleyes:

I'm pretty sure the point of the article and this thread is to point out the stupidity of paying a bunch of retards (The Geek Squad) to come fix a router that the consumer ALREADY knows is bad. They expect him to pay $139 bucks to validate a problem with a $79 piece of equipment. It's called a RIP OFF.

Netgear should send him a replacement unit instead of shuffling him off to waste $139 bucks on a service that he doesn't need. The consumer is not paying for convenience, he's paying for Netgears poor customer support and lack of willingness to support their own hardware. Comparing this issue to getting the brakes on your car replaced is about as retarded as calling The Geek Squad for anything.
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^^ Winner!
 
thats the same price i paid for a lap dance last weekend in vegas.
 
There's a reason the Cisco routers are more expensive. They have plenty for sale on ebay, and with Cisco, power cycling the device is generally not your first troubleshooting step.

I found that working on the cheap stuff is actually more difficult, but that's a personal preference. Needless to say, my home Cisco router with a standard UPS has been running for two years now and no restarts.

There are very few good techs that do the home repairs. If they are like me, they have enough problems at their day job and really don't want to receive phone calls in the evening to resolve more problems.
 
My gig-e based Apple Airport Express hasn't been reset in... my god, well over 2 years now. And it's on a UPS too, so not even power outages have knocked it out.

Really good hardware, those airports are - and cheap too (aka cheaper than a mid-range Dlink @ BB), when purchased refurbished.
 
Customer is a moron in my opinion. I know that sounds harsh, but seriously, after a few days of a new product not working, back to the store that bitch goes. Dude wasted entirely too much time on this.
 
No its not retarded to compare the Mechanic to the I.T. guy. Both you are paying for the convenience of not having to deal with the issue yourself. It does not matter if the router is two dollars. If you are not savvy enough to know when to buy a new router, then you pay someone else to do it. Like I said the issue is almost always with the user. Expecting netgear to come out for free is retarded. And i ask if there are I.T. because I see a lot of whining here about an issue that clearly requires paid assistance. Exchange it... if it still does not work get a professional out. No need to try to start a goddamn war over it. The consumerist always does this crap. They try to setup companies to fail in situations where it is arguable who is in the wrong, spin it out of control and rake in the page hits. They have to keep shoveling this crap out to sell ad space. They don't care about anything but... the people who are fooled by them are worse than they are.
 
Every netgear router I encountered has had connection dropping issues. Thats why I reccommend Linksys products from now on.
 
DonInKansas said:
Routers are like printers. Cheaper to replace than fix.
Click to expand...

It's not this. It's that the end user was probably too dumb to know how to set it up, in which case having someone else do it for you is about the only option. Router setup, especially wifi with WPA2 and passwords, not something the typical gramma can do, wants to do, cares to know how to do, etc.

All they did was told someone where they could go to get help. Geek squad can't "fix" a router if it was actually broke, duh. you throw it away and get a new one.
 
Linksys is good, though after a few years my linksys router would periodically shut off the wireless when on moderate to heavy load. As recommended here, I put on Tomato firmware, and now it works without fail. I wondered what Geek squad would have done for my situation.
 
yes it's stupid for Netgear to tell the customer to call GS for help.

but the dumbass customer should call his ISP. Since it is DSL, it very well could be the modem dropping the DSL signal due to a bad SNR, too high attenuation, or the like.

he should have called his ISP first and had them verify whether or not the signal to the house/phone jack is good or bad.
 
It bugs me to see a company try and shove problems onto other companies. What they should be doing is just taking the router in for an rma. If they find its just because the owner is a moron then they should charge him a fee. But no company should be telling you to take you device to a 3rd party company when your product is still under warrenty.


I've been using my wrt54gl with the tomato firmware for almost 2 years now. Awsome router with no problems yet.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
While Netgear should support their own products, paying $139 to have someone go to your house isn't absurd.
 
gn0me said:
I'm pretty sure the point of the article and this thread is to point out the stupidity of paying a bunch of retards (The Geek Squad) to come fix a router that the consumer ALREADY knows is bad.
Click to expand...

Rule # 1 in IT, the user (consumer) doesn't know anything, they only think they do.

This applies 99% of the time.
 
I like how everyone puts down a whole company because a few of their employees are idiots. This means Microsoft, Apple, ASUS, Google, etc. must all be shit companies because I've heard/read a couple of their employees stay stupid stuff.
 
Project_Nightmare said:
Every netgear router I encountered has had connection dropping issues. Thats why I reccommend Linksys products from now on.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I have a pile of WRT54's sitting at home. All bricked, worthless, after a year of use. We have tons of RVO42's at work, all bricked, worthless, after less than a year of use. The ones that still work need to be power cycled frequently or the VPN tunnel refuses to connect.

Meanwhile my DLink DGL-4300, 4 of my neighbors, 6 friends and over a dozen family members that I convinced to buy one, all are solid as rocks and have been for years. Honestly I'm upset they dropped the 4300 from their line-up.
 
GushpinBob said:
Stupid #1: Buying a Netgear product.
Stupid #2: Going to GS to troubleshoot your Netgear product.
Click to expand...

Stupid #1 : Not reading the article.

Read the article he didn't go to Geek Squad, he called Netgears tech support, and they didn't help him, and suggested he call Geek Squad for a house service call, and if they couldn't fix it they would send him a new one.


Classy Netgear, real classy.
 
Kagato said:
^ This - They're pretty much built with planned obsolescence, though I have to admit, I've had my DLink DGL-4100 and it's been running fine for far longer than I ever thought it would.
Click to expand...

HydroBudz said:
Oddly enough I've had my DLink DGL-4300 for a few years and have never had to reset it. Most solid consumer grade router I've ever seen. Meanwhile I have stacks of Netgear/Linksys bricked routers in my closet. Go figure.
Click to expand...

HydroBudz said:
Meanwhile my DLink DGL-4300, 4 of my neighbors, 6 friends and over a dozen family members that I convinced to buy one, all are solid as rocks and have been for years. Honestly I'm upset they dropped the 4300 from their line-up.
Click to expand...

Guess I will chime in also. I am another proud owner of a DGL-4300. It's been going strong for 5 years. Never once had to reset it because of issues because simply put, I have never had a problem with it. The QoS is one of the best I have ever seen on a consumer grade router. The only time I have power cycled it is when I have had to reboot the modem and I was too lazy to go into the GUI and renew the IP address.

I've had luck with older Linksys routers (the WR54 series), but lately I have seen nothing but problems with them (the slim ones with no external antennas) especially since I'm the first person that's called to diagnose when someone I know has problems with computers or internet.

The 2wire DSL modem and router all-in-ones have gone progressively downhill as well. They used to be solid units about 10 years ago. Then when ATT started making them the de-facto units they gave out with their service and trying to cram even more shit into them (like U-verse) in the past 5 years they have gone to utter shit.
 
Sacrilego said:
Unfortunately the majority of consumers have no knowledge of what they’re getting.
So they see these things advertised in their face and that it does what they need.
They don’t look at online reviews or specs because they’re not that interested in knowing these things.
Like someone told me before: “They don’t care how an engine works, that just want to turn that key on make it go”.
Knowing this, companies will make an economical (for them not you) solution designed to maximize profit and include many fancy keywords to entice a consumer to buy it.
Us [H]ard ones take our time to research for the right product or even roll our own.
Click to expand...

You bring sanity to the world, my friend.
 
I think a lot of people either didn't RTFA or comprehend TFA... the router is a DSL router, aka, DSL modem + router in one. There is no "plug the computer straight into the modem" there is no "call the phone company to check the modem", the router IS the modem. Since he owns the modem the phone company isn't responsible for anything past verifying good connection to his house, any tech call to go out and troubleshoot the modem he owns would be an out of pocket expense (probably in the 50-60 dollar range), but thats just to check the modem side.

Dude probably should have just taken it back to the store and got a new one, probably different brand. D-Link seems to make one tho I don't think Cisco/Linksys does.

Issues like this are why I'd ALWAYS have a seperate router and modem (cable or otherwise) and why I'd never recommend buying your own modem. Yeah you MIGHT save a few bucks after 2 years or so, but if anything goes wrong with it, it's on you. When my modem got fried by a lnearby ightning hit 2 years ago I took it in to the Comcast store and said "hey this stopped working" and they handed me a new one, when lightning blew up the tree on the other side of the house this year and fried the new modem, back to the Comcast store for a new one. Also the firmware in the all in ones is linked to the modem firmware which normally means you can't run a custom router firmware in them and the firmware that is there is at the mercy of the ISP (ISPs push out firmware updates for modems routinely, often times to add new features for something their about to implement, no update = no worky for your modem when new features activate, ISP firmwares also typically put... unreasonable limits on the wireless side).
 
Project_Nightmare said:
Every netgear router I encountered has had connection dropping issues. Thats why I reccommend Linksys products from now on.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't use a Linksys product even if you paid me to.

Of the three (Linksys, Netgear and D-Link) none are perfect, but Linksys is the worst of the bunch. I've owned multiple of each over the years, currently D-Link is what I use.

My first router I bought, back when they were impossible to find, was a small D-Link. Wish I could remember the model number. Didn't have a hub and the case on it was clear. Think I got it in 2000, I've had DSL since 1999. Anyways, I'm pretty sure my parents are still using that one.
 
ClariorHincHonos said:
Customer is a moron in my opinion. I know that sounds harsh, but seriously, after a few days of a new product not working, back to the store that bitch goes. Dude wasted entirely too much time on this.
Click to expand...

This pluys

veilv0x said:
Ok, wtf, aren't there any I.T. people on this message board? Yes... it costs more to have someone come to your home to set a router up than it does to buy one. The dude could try to replace it yes, but 99% of the time the issue is a B.T.S.D. error (between the seat and desk). If you go to a mechanic to have your brakes changed, you pay more for the labor than the parts. Its the price you pay for convenience. After you figure in the cost of the labor paid to the agent and the vehicle and everything else they are not making much overhead anyway. If you guys had your way there would be no money in doing anything computer related. "Software should be free! Tech support and labor should be free! Hardware should be cheap!" Jesus christ...
You can, right now, go to best buy and get a badass N-router, your choice of three different brands, and a guy to come to your house and set it all up for $129. That includes the hardware and labor. When the people called the GeekSquad I'm sure that was offered to them as well. The consumerist is retarded, i think it is run by communists...
Click to expand...

This. Just because geeks like us that read [H] could handle this problem and we think paying someone $120 to fix it seems high doesn't make it a rip off to an id10t.

I own a construction company, and run into this belief that since homeowners watch HGTV and they could do it that somehow my services are devalued. TV makes things look easy, they also have invested tens of thousands of dollars in tools, and have something called overhead associated with running a business.
 
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