Arlo Security System (Open Box)

WHAT A WASTE OF TIME! I am a tech guy. Up front, just sayin, but the lure of "wireless" was just too much, against my better judgement to just get a WIRED security camera system, I jumped at this "convenient" wireless and "simple" bullet-proof system. Well, its not. Let me explain how MY experience went. SO I hook up the base station to my extensive LAN here at home, I sync each camera one by one, as instructed. And then it says click SEE LIVE for each camera, which showed a video view, but it never went live. I later discovered this is a compatibility issue, because I am running Windows 10 on a high end computer and using EDGE for my browser, completely up to date, I have the best computer super fast, etc., but this ARLO software was not showing me a correct view. Wasted an HOUR on this. Then I noticed, my mouse changed to a clickable shape when I moved it into the center of the video window. Voila! Now the camera went live. But some of the cameras did NOT go live, they instead showed a new click button that said UPGRADE FIRMWARE NOW. SO I clicked that, for each one, and I got NO FEEDBACK in the process but this ominous message that says DO NOT REMOVE BATTERIES DURING THIS PROCESS. So I didn't. But for some cameras the process did not finish. SO I searched online and found that some users had to wait DAYS until this process completed. Now that's just not acceptable. I rebooted, then it said no internet connection. Yet my browser showed and proved an internet connection. Something WRONG with this software. Still troubleshooting, I thought maybe I need to get the fastest connection on my home LAN as possible. I turned off the basestation to move it to a new location in my home near the router on the same switch there, next to the cable modem. I have fast 100 MBS speed. Then the cameras would NOT connect. Said no internet connection. So frustrated, I called tech support on a weekday afternoon. Nothing special, but nobody would answer for an hour! SO I hung up and went to the internet again. Seems like NETGEAR wants the consumers to help each other, because even the NETGEAR message boards for ARLO were full of comments from people seeking help and answers similar to my problem. One person said they were so frustrated, that they have been waiting 3 weeks now, and still NO help from Netgear. That's when I said, "how valuable is my time? I have wasted 4 hours already trying to get this stupid thing to work, and how long am I going to give it?" I gave it another hour. I tried reconnecting all the cameras, one by one, and then they wanted to still upgrade, some of them, not all, confusing on that... just what makes that decision in the software, because I never got any message that the firmware got upgraded. I searched online but it seemed that my version was newer than what was shown on the netgear message boards, so a bunch of conflicting information there. I am a tech guy. This tech guy could not get any satisfactory answers no matter how much I drilled down using a variety of key words and even resorting to Google search for help. Nothing except RANDOM experiments was available to me. ANd so many other people were having the same problems. The thing just does not work except maybe under the most simplistic circumstances, such as a one or two camera set up in the same room, maybe. Who knows? All I do know, is that my system would not record when there was motion, excepting on only ONE of my 5 cameras. So disappointing. How was this to give me ANY confidence that it could be reliably used as a "security" system to detect and inform me? LOL but not really. It also sent me an email every few seconds that there was some motion at one point. Ruining my phone call. SO I turned off notifications in my phone. What's the point if it can only notice you in the most annoying way??? I mean, I want some REAL feedback from the system, not an email everytime a leaf moves!! and for each camera, every 30 seconds. It renders my iPhone pretty useless to be bombarded with numerous notifications, all pretty meaningless. That's when I decided to pack it up. CUt my losses, and realize this just was not prime time. It was not panacea. Its something that works maybe 50% of the time for 50% of the people, and I guess that is their business plan, to sell a bunch and even with 50% returns, no big loss. Sooner or later this will just not be OK. Also, after these few hours, my battery levels in the cameras had DROPPED 20% to 80% !!! Does this mean it would only last a few days? I didn't want to find out. I got on Amazon and started the refund process. In my opinion, this product is junk. I don't think I have ever been as displeased in a product in my life, based on what my expectations were and how this all went down.