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WiFi Router Wars: Eero Is Turning Luma Shipping Troubles Into An Opportunity

This article is more than 7 years old.

An Eero router (Photo credit: Eero)

By Aaron Tilley and Shelby Carpenter

Eero was the most exciting thing to happen to the consumer WiFi market for a long time when it launched earlier this year. The San Francisco-based startup's system improves WiFi performance with multiple routers that blanket a home with a WiFi signal. What's more, Eero makes managing the WiFi network a lot easier with a phone app. Since then, a slew of competitors have come out of woodwork, and Eero is doing its best to stay ahead. 

Luma, currently one Eero's main competitors, has delayed shipment to many of its customers. Eero is offering peeved Luma customers a heavily discounted pack of three Eero routers for $299 (down from $499). Pre-ordering a pack of three Luma routers costs $249 early on, but now a three-pack Luma system costs $399 through Amazon.

"I'm sorry you're having issues with your other pre-order," reads an email from Eero's customer support to a Luma pre-order customer who reached out the company. "We are currently offering our original pre-order pricing of $299 for customers like yourself. If you'd be interested, please let me know and I can get you a code and instructions. Since this is a significant discount, your discretion would be greatly appreciated."

On Luma's Facebook page, a post from last week exclaims that thousands of Lumas have been installed into homes, and that the company will send an shipping update to customers who haven't received the product by Monday. It looks like that Monday update never came through. More than a hundred irate Luma customers poured into the comment section of the Facebook post.

"Worst Customer Service EVER!!!" reads one Facebook comment. "[Ordered] mine a long time ago and cannot get any reliable info on shipment. What company sits on your money for 6 months and does not even give you a delivery date?"

(Update: "All customers who've pre-ordered through Luma have received an email providing their ship timing or a request for their shipping address (so that we may confirm shipment timing),"Luma said. However, a customer who ordered through Amazon has yet to receive an update.)

Soon, the comment section started filling up with details of the Eero discount for any Luma customer who can provide a pre-order receipt to Eero's customer service.

Luma customers have also been airing their angst on Twitter .

Eero had no comment.

Delayed shipping is nothing new for a hardware startup. Before Eero finally started shipping its WiFi routers to customers, it delayed three times as it scaled up its manufacturing operation in China. The big advantage Eero has here is that it was one of the first companies offering something new and interesting to consumers fed up with lousy WiFi router products.

Initial reviews of Eero have been pretty positive. For the most part, reviewers have praised the product's simple setup process and the ease of adding more Eeros to improve coverage. The biggest complaint with Eero has been the high price tag and the limited set of software features for managing the network. For Luma, one review in PC Magazine said it had faster performance than Eero.

To differentiate from Eero, Luma has emphasized the parental controls that Luma comes with. Parents can kick their kids off the network if it's time to do homework or go to bed. Luma users can also closely monitor what users are doing on the Internet. Eero shipped its router product with a much more limited set of software features. But earlier this month, Eero announced a software update that added similar parental controls. Luma is starting to look not so different from Eero.

Eero has also kept ahead in the fundraising realm. To date, Eero has raised a massive $90 million in venture capital from the likes of Menlo Ventures, Index Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and Playground Ventures. Meanwhile, Luma has raised only $15 million total from investors like Accel Partners, Amazon, Felicis Ventures, Relay Ventures and Webb Investment Networ. Plume, another upcoming startup creating a system of multiple WiFi routers, has raised $25 million to date.

Updated with comment and corrections from Luma.

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