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Is Engenius on the way out? No more support?

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icerabbit

Occasional Visitor
Intro. Based on some reading and positive impressions, a number of years ago I upgraded from a "whole house wifi router " to an Engenius POE kit with two access points. Decent expanded coverage. Trouble was, the lack of roaming, where phones and tablets would hold on to ap1 instead of hopping onto ap2. Talked to Engenius. Upgraded to a managed poe+ switch and three aps, as the switch would manage the roaming. Phone support was there to cover an install pamphlet detail I was stuck on. Things were absolutely fine. Could walk around most anywhere and not skip a beat. I think I called engenius at one other point for something. Things were great. Except the upper part of the house sometimes struggles and the garden (understandably) needs help. Ordered an outdoor AP, but as fall and winter came, left that for another day. Time flies, too hot to sit outside, ... Now that it is cooler and things are slowing down, I want to install the outdoor AP and am adding another indoor AP in the attic.

Cables are ready. Log on to the managed switch. You have three firmware updates. One for the switch and some for the APs. Good. Let it do its thing. Reboot. " incompatible firmware " notifications, oh and when I plug in the outdoor AP that sat in the box for a while, can't manage it without updating its firmware, so can't do a thing with it from the management screen, so that one is missing in action.

Meanwhile with the switch firmware update, things are also going haywire in the AP list screens, where it will not show any APs attached or managed, from one browser or computer to another. My mac with safari seems consistent in rendering it all.

Poked around.
Looked online.
Figured I'd call Engenius.
The toll free number on the website is gone.
There is not even a long distance number on their site for NA.
Grabbed the install pamphlet from the box, dialed the if you have trouble number.
It rings. A notice they're not accepting calls while they revamp support or some such .
Tried email and ticket.
Their forum ... pretty much dead and lots of spam.

Two days. No help.

So, I have this gut feeling that I have a ton of dollars invested in this managed equipment, and engenius is no longer what it is used to be, not available and willing to support their products and fix the issues.

I think things look pretty bad when the manufacturer decides to pull the plug on phone support.
 
Last contact I had with EnGenius was Nov 2017. I sent a query to the general press email account. I'll post back if I hear anything.
 
Last contact I had with EnGenius was Nov 2017. I sent a query to the general press email account. I'll post back if I hear anything.

Last I heard - Engenius is related to Senao and Zyxel...

Hope this helps...
 
Senao is EnGenius' parent. There is no relationship that I know of to Zyxel.
 
Intro. Based on some reading and positive impressions, a number of years ago I upgraded from a "whole house wifi router " to an Engenius POE kit with two access points. Decent expanded coverage. Trouble was, the lack of roaming, where phones and tablets would hold on to ap1 instead of hopping onto ap2. Talked to Engenius. Upgraded to a managed poe+ switch and three aps, as the switch would manage the roaming. Phone support was there to cover an install pamphlet detail I was stuck on. Things were absolutely fine. Could walk around most anywhere and not skip a beat. I think I called engenius at one other point for something. Things were great. Except the upper part of the house sometimes struggles and the garden (understandably) needs help. Ordered an outdoor AP, but as fall and winter came, left that for another day. Time flies, too hot to sit outside, ... Now that it is cooler and things are slowing down, I want to install the outdoor AP and am adding another indoor AP in the attic.

Cables are ready. Log on to the managed switch. You have three firmware updates. One for the switch and some for the APs. Good. Let it do its thing. Reboot. " incompatible firmware " notifications, oh and when I plug in the outdoor AP that sat in the box for a while, can't manage it without updating its firmware, so can't do a thing with it from the management screen, so that one is missing in action.

Meanwhile with the switch firmware update, things are also going haywire in the AP list screens, where it will not show any APs attached or managed, from one browser or computer to another. My mac with safari seems consistent in rendering it all.

Poked around.
Looked online.
Figured I'd call Engenius.
The toll free number on the website is gone.
There is not even a long distance number on their site for NA.
Grabbed the install pamphlet from the box, dialed the if you have trouble number.
It rings. A notice they're not accepting calls while they revamp support or some such .
Tried email and ticket.
Their forum ... pretty much dead and lots of spam.

Two days. No help.

So, I have this gut feeling that I have a ton of dollars invested in this managed equipment, and engenius is no longer what it is used to be, not available and willing to support their products and fix the issues.

I think things look pretty bad when the manufacturer decides to pull the plug on phone support.

Icerabbit,

Sorry to hear of your difficulty in reaching customer service via a telephone line at EnGenius! (And thanks, Tim, for bringing this comment to our attention.)

Our telephone customer support line is being streamlined to more efficiently serve our partners.

We care about maintaining a positive relationship with our authorized resellers and end users. So to serve their customer-service needs, we’ve updated our process and elevated our support via different methods from a US-based technical staff and sales engineers.

Reach us via the online chat. (Just click the “talk bubble” icon at the bottom right of the home page, and we’ll begin working with you to tackle the problem and fix it.)

Our Online Help Center [https://helpcenter.engeniustech.com/hc/en-us] includes videos, articles, and white papers.

You can also email us at support@engeniustech.com.

To resolve your current issue, please send us an email with “case 3972” in the subject line. An EnGenius FAE has been assigned to your case and will work with you to quickly resolve your issue.

Best regards,

EnGenius Support
 
Thank you for the reply.

Without a response yet to my ticket, I did try my chance at a chat earlier this afternoon, and saw your reply above right after said chat ended, and of course the "remedy" from chat went nowhere.

Good news is. Apparently the incompatibility is "normal" and there is an internal document stating that, that updates for 1.9 will roll out by end of year ... it would be nice if that was part of a notification in the system post update, and posted online on your site in a couple places, instead of causing alarm.

The bad news is. I did the chat. It took way too long to get anywhere. 5-10 min between tech replies. One hour. Nothing fixed. The only good news was that he shared that internal document regarding "incompatibility".

I'm still stuck with the fact that I cannot update a single device further.

Still getting the prohibited cursor when I try to place a checkmark for a device to be updated.

The technician on chat advised I should update the AP directly from my computer, but failed to offer instructions or a link for more information / KB, when I asked. So, I did exactly what he told me to do, plugged an ethernet cable between the outdoor AP and the computer. Nothing. Why would it, it needs more voltage on the ethernet line than my laptop can give it. Tried it with power injector in-between. Still nothing.

And, basically that is now another hour wasted, after the hours clicking around, trying the Engenius help center, the Engenius forum, broader searches.

Note, that I have zero trouble doing some research and troubleshooting on my own, I consider that par for the course, reading and following instructions etc for something ... when that information is available to me. When it is not, and I'm stuck, I like to be able to reach a human.

The alarming part still is now, that:

- I still have to wait longer for indirect support
- It really sounds like phone support is not going to return, something that causes me grave concern really, considering the market and install base

... streamlining ... and the help center, forum with spam, chat bubble ...

Please, NO !

I tried several searches of all kinds on the site, regarding my situation, zero results or something that doesn't help me. (otherwise it'd be resolved already).

I tried the forum - and frankly love forums - but there has been no staff in many months. More spam than current posts.

Chat takes up too much time.

It is a FAIL.

I simply could have been on hold for 20-30 min. Talked to a human on the phone, who I gave access to my computer, so they could see the issue, 1min to reassure about this "incompatibility", 1 min to see the bug, maybe a couple min to help me get this outdoor AP up and running ... done.

But no, I am essentially dealing with worse support for business devices, than for retail consumer / home user networking stuff, that I moved away from.
 
Last edited:
The fantastic news is, my ticket was assigned, I posted a reply to the ticket and within minutes of doing that, I got a call from Gabriel.

He reviewed the situation. Basically yes the 1.8-1.9 thing is for later this year, the "new out of the box" items and their factory firmware are unable to just be simply updated the easy way via the controller, hence the prohibited, and require a longer roundabout intervention. Like an energizer bunny he just breezed through the group, removed and reset APs, did network scanning, used default IP addresses to access them, updated firmwares ... more reboots, and all is well and calm now.

The thing is, it would have been nice to have had this on day one, where you get stuck, updating your stuff, trying to add your new purchases, can't get it work, can't figure it out due to lack of documentation, you call, reach a human, even if they have to schedule a call back from a level 2 or 3, so be it. But it'd be way faster and way less stressful than this roundabout way.

It may be streamlined for Engenius ... I just don't know that it hits the mark.
 
PS: Big thanks to Tim. Your email set a few things in motion, that allow me to have my network in order tonight :)
 
Not yet. During this thing, I have tried to download it to see if it could help, but the download button does nothing. Tried on three computers with different browsers. So, I was only using the built in management screen from the controller.
 
Not yet. During this thing, I have tried to download it to see if it could help, but the download button does nothing. Tried on three computers with different browsers. So, I was only using the built in management screen from the controller.
So you had to provide remote access to your LAN for Gabriel to work his magic?
 
Yes.
Sorry. I typed that poorly.
While he was on the phone, we used a third party service for remote access to a spare desktop that's sitting besides the network equipment, which makes it easy to add, remove, unplug, ... as one's sitting right there. Don't even have to drag a laptop in.
 

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