Rant against NetGear

[mikep56]

Hi All,

I hope you are all ready for a vent post!

I bought a wireless router (Linksys WRT54GS) and 3 NutGear WG111 wireless adapters from Radio Shack to create my home wireless network. At the time I didn't notice that 2 of the WG111s were v3 and 1 was v2. I installed the linksys and 1 WG111 without any problems. Had internet connectivity and full speed of 54 Mbps. I went to add a second PC to the network using the next adapter, which turned out to be the v2. This adapter would not see the router, or obviously, the internet. I re-installed the software many times to no avail. I figured that I had a defective adapter, and tried the third one. It installed and ran without any problems. So I put the defective adapter aside, figuring that I would troubleshoot it later.

Eventually I got around to calling NetGear tech support. What a disaster!! My PCs all run with XP Pro SP3. The tech asked me to uninstall the packaged software and install software from their website. When that didn't work, they wanted me to reinstall Windows XP with SP2 only. After several more phone calls I finally got an RMA number to send the defective adapter back.

The adapter came back about 2 weeks later. Now it will occasionally see the router and connect to the internet, but within about 10-15 minutes, it will drop the connection, and won't get it back, even after a hard reboot. More phone calls, more lack of customer support!! In one day I called three separate times, and after speaking to an "excellent customer service" representative, was put on hold, after which the call was dropped.

I really dislike this company, and I would not recommend their crap to anyone. As an aside, when I posted this on the NetGear forum, the moderators initially pulled it, saying that they didn't see any point to it. Yeah, they don't see any point in letting the user community know about crappy hardware and crappy service.

SCREW NetGear!

Sorry for the long rant, and thanks for listening!

Mike

PS I didn't know which forum to post this in, so I posted it here and in the Hardware Forum. Sorry if this qualifies as a crosspost.

Mike

[g-force]

Yes, this is (senseless) crosspost with this one: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=133227&hl=

@admin: please delete this one

@all: go to linked thread, don`t answer this one