Arlo Ultra 4K UHD Wire-Free Security Camera System (Open Box)

After having a couple of Arlo Pro cameras for a few years, I decided to invest in the Arlo Ultra system.  My experience has been so bad that I will never purchase another Arlo product.  (To be fair, I was warned in advance by several people about the abysmal support.) SUMMARY: Make no mistake, this product has potential.  But if you don't have significant time and energy (and patience) to devote to dealing with Arlo's abysmal tech support - and you WILL need tech support - then this is NOT the product for you.  (I have a degree in electrical engineering and have used Arlo's previous products for over five years, so the issues that I'm experiencing are more than just how to set up or use the cameras.  You can read more about that below, if you choose.) THE DETAILS: First, you should know when purchasing this system that it comes with a free one-year PREMIER subscription.  This is not the subscription that is recommended for this product - it provides only 2K resolution recordings, not the 4K resolution recordings that these expensive cameras are capable of recording.  If you sign up for the ELITE plan recommended for use with this product, you get NO discount. I called Arlo to try to rectify this and was told that my subscription would be credited so I would only be paying the difference between the two plans.  I have a transcript of this conversation sent to me by the Arlo representative.  However, they did not honor it and I've received no discount or credit.  They continue to bill me the full cost of the ELITE subscription.  While I may eventually receive a credit/adjustment, I've already spent many hours trying to address this. When I purchased these cameras, one of the six cameras did not work.  There was an awful noise associated with only that camera.  The tech support person tried to tell me that it was a result of poor signal quality, despite the fact that the signal quality was high, and other cameras with worse signal quality had perfect audio.  I had to go through another tech support agent to get acknowledgement that the problem was the camera.  Unfortunately, that agent said he would submit the paperwork for a replacement, but never did.  Several days later I had to wait AGAIN on hold with tech support to get the paperwork submitted finally.  All told - addressing this problem took several (4 to 6) hours of my time. Then I started having issues where I was receiving hundreds of notifications I shouldn't be receiving because those types of notifications were not selected in my "Smart" Notifications, not getting recordings for which I was receiving notifications, and getting notifications even when all of my push notifications were turned off or the system was entirely disarmed.  After waiting on hold for 55 minutes, "Cherry" tried to tell me that all I needed to do was adjust my motion sensitivity.  When I told her I had already done that, and that it didn't change anything, and questioned her about why I would be receiving notifications for types of motion I had specifically excluded, she pretended that the connection had been dropped (by putting herself on mute and then coming back briefly to say "are you there?") and, despite having specifically asked for my phone number at the beginning of the call "in case we get disconnected," she did not ever call me back. After another two-hour tech support chat in which an agent had me convinced the problem was solved, it turned out not to be solved.  So I contacted support a third time for this issue.  After reading the previous chat transcript, the tech support agent told me that all of the problems with receiving notifications that I shouldn't be receiving were related to my battery and I should swap the battery in one camera with another.  When I asked for clarification on how that could possibly explain why the AI system was sending me notifications for types of motion I had not selected, he had no answer.  He told me to contact support again if the issue continued.  The link he sent me to allow me to do that was not operational ("There was an error processing your request. Please contact with [sic] Arlo support.") After still another hour and a half with tech support trying to get the issue escalated, and explaining to the tech over and over the issue I was having (I think maybe he just wasn't reading?) I was informed that it would be escalated and that I would be contacted within 48 hours by higher-level tech.  The following morning I was informed that would not happen.  Arlo tech support techs appear to have mastered the art of getting the customer off the phone/chat when they cannot solve the issue, and making it exceedingly difficult to update a ticket.  The only way to get back in touch with tech support is wait on hold again - sometimes for as much as 90 minutes. The issue remains unresolved.  The next step from tech support's perspective is to delete the activity zones, unpair all of the cameras, disconnect the hub, remove the hub from my account, re-pair the entire system, and then reconfigure all of the settings on my seven different cameras.  I've heard from others that this is what Arlo defaults to when they cannot figure out how to solve a problem. It seems that Arlo knows there are a number of issues with their systems (including one where every camera gets an error saying that the activity zones are not active when, in fact, they are), but has no clue how to fix them or how to resolve their customers' problems. The system has potential, but Arlo's tech support and the issues they cannot or will not resolve keep this product from being what it should be.  I cannot recommend it.