Swann vs. Qsee Tech Support

[icamera 0]

Anyone have experience?

 

Swann:

Used Swann tech support I think once or twice before. They were helpful in my case.

 

Qsee:

Very poor tech support. Reps were not knowledgeable about own product line.

Some of my call was answered in foreign country (India?)

Look at reviews on google seems like I was not first to complain about this company.

(THANKFULLY COSTCO HAS A GOOD RETURN POLICY AND THEY PROBABLY DUMP BACK ALL THE RETURNED PRODUCT ON QSEE WHEN THEIR REPS ARE NOT ABLE TO RESOLVE BASIC ISSUES)

[daveshoot 0]

I had pretty good results with Swann support; all depends who you get on the phone. I do believe all were Indian. One was a script reader, but another was very sharp.

 

I also reached a surprisingly well-informed Costco concierge tech guy, who was better than all the Swann folks. There also it depends on your luck in the queue, but the one guy was an NVR port forwarding guru, which really surprised me.

 

No experience with Q-See.

 

I'm planning to write up more of my generally great experience with the Swann IP NVR package but it's not really installed yet. I wanted to get it all running, including the iPhone app, before undertaking the real installation. Now I'm working on the final NVR location, then mounting the cameras outdoors.

 

In a nutshell:

The cameras are small, really well made, and the picture quality is great. Only tried the IR indoor but it sure lights up a dark living room.

The fan is loud and continuous (not a blowdryer but you don't want it in a room with you) and the software is unnecessarily complex, but workable.

The Swannview phone app is pretty cool and if they would pay me to rewrite their documentation, they would spend a lot less time taking tech calls.

Now I'm wondering if 8 cams will be enough (and I started out looking for 2-4).

Sure hope they bring in a PTZ soon, especially since their software keeps displaying all the PTZ functions whether you have one or not.

 

Edit to point out the one out-of-box failure: the mini-CD with all the software was unreadable on 3 different PCs. This must have been corrupted in production. A Swann tech emailed me the essential files, although I don't know what I didn't get. NVR, cams, and accessories were all running on desktop or around the house for a week with no failures of any kind.