RMA - AC86

[CaptainSTX]

Just a heads up for those of you having issues and considering doing an RMA on your ASUS AC86.

When I contacted ASUS yesterday to return my AC86 which was giving me fits they did not have any units to exchange for mine and the best they could offer was they would try and repair mine and if it could not be fixed they would discuss other options.

This leads me to wonder if there might be underlying problems with the AC86 hardware given the number of posts on this forum about strange behavior and problems people experienced with their AC86 units and ASUS can't or won't keep up with the demand for replacement units.

My AC86 got so flakey that the DHCP servers for my VPN clients crashed on a daily basis forcing me to do a daily "Nuclear Reset" and or software restore so the router could rebuild its Iptables. At the end I couldn't run any scripts for as soon as they started the VPN server and VPN client would not work. Other issues included not being able to access the GUI, 5 Ghz WiFi radio going off line.

 

[Livin]

I have one that seems to have multiple different issues... UI hangs, radios don't work, doesn't boot, etc

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

[CaptainSTX]

They are in the process of testing repairing mine according to the last update they sent me. Supposedly they will have reached a conclusion by July 30th.

I'm skeptical that when they test they run even a single VPN client and a single VPN server or for that manner test for more than a few minutes.

 

[CaptainSTX]

Got the AC86 I returned on an RMA back yesterday with a the note that they had repaired the 5 Ghz radio which was only one of five issues that I listed on items that were not working correctly.

When I fired It up today it was working OK I thought. Then I checked at the 2.4 Ghz radio wasn't transmitting a WiFi SSID that I could find. Radio is stuck on Channel 0 and none of the pull down boxes worked in trying to make changes.

Went through the usual recovery steps including switching from Merlin 384.13 back to the most recent ASUS firmware and still no working 2.4 Ghz radio.

Called ASUS support and after doing the usual hokey pokey with them they had me send them screen shots, logs, config files etc. and they will get back to me.

Given their failure to fully test units and actually repair them I would be extremely leery about purchasing a "refurbished unit" as there seems to be some underlying hardware issues with this model, more so than other models. I think their test for WiFi radios is if the two indicators light up all is good.

 

[curlysir]

I went through 3 of the Amazon Used Very Good RT- AC86's recently before I gave up. They all had the same problem with either the 2.4 Ghz or 5 Ghz band not working. The first worked for about a week before the 5.0 went bad and then went into an endless reboot when powered off then on. The next 2 had the 2.4 radio dead out of the box, the light on the front wouldn't light up. The bad radios were all stuck on channel 0 and auto. Another odd thing is that the wifi button on the side would not turn off the wi-fi, the light would go out but come right back on. I tried factory reset, reboots, and different firmwares with no results. They all looked new and had all components with them. I have had good and bad luck with Amazon's used stuff, mostly bad on electronics however. They were having a 20% off sale of the price so I thought I would give it a try. It was obvious on these last 2 that they didn't even power them up to check them out before reselling.

I have a RT-AC86 I purchased in September 2018 that has been trouble free and thought I would get another to use as an access point. After I purchased the used ones and had the problems I did some checking and found out that this is not an uncommon problem.

I would still like to get another one (new this time) but think I will wait a little longer to see if they are still having problems. I would have considered sending them to Asus for repair if I would not have had to pay return shipping plus Asus not having any exchange units to send.

There definitely appears to be a bad batch of the RT-AC86's out there. Hopefully Asus can figure out the problem as this is a very good router when it works.