rob was here.

It's Netgear's fault.

Three months ago i bought an netgear WTG624 wireless router from futureshop. It has been working as expected over the last 3 months, every now and then it needed a power cycle if my internet connection dropped but no big deal. Untill last night, when i pressed the "check for new firmware" button in the administration menu. The software told me that a new firmware was available and asked if I would like to upgrade to it. I clicked "yes".

After about 3-4 minutes of doing whatever it was doing, the router stopped working, and the power led was blinking between green and amber colors every few seconds. I bipassed the router and got the cable modem working directly to my dad's computer so I could goto netgear's website and find how to resolve this funny problem.

The next few minutes can only be described as horrific. I found myself going to netgear's community forums, where there were several large threads about how people's WTG624 router's are blinking green and amber and not working whatsoever. At first I was sort of intriged that there was so much information about this problem, thinking that there must be a solution offered for such a wide spread problem. Guess what? There is no solution other than mailing the router back at my own cost.

It turns out that the dozens of people complaining on the forums have done the exact same thing as me (auto-update to newest firmware) right before their router died, but Netgear apparently WONT TAKE RESPONSIBILITY.

I sent Netgear this comment:

Hi Netgear! I just want you to know i've been a loyal Netgear customer for several years now, and have really enjoyed your products (routers, access points, wireless NIC's, etc!)

That is, of course, until I tried to do an firmware auto-update on my WGT624v2 router last night, which turned it into a useless paperweight. If you are not familiar with this problem, just check your customer forums: there is a huge thread there where dozens and dozens of your valued customers have been posting the EXACT SAME PROBLEM there for several weeks! and they are all looking for a solution but are calling upon deaf ears!! Hooray for Netgear!

Here's my post on that particular forum thread, please take the time to read it:

I've had the router for about 3 months so far. As many people have done, i went ahead and tried to do an auto-update from the admin screen before reading the forums or anything. My router's power light is now blinking green and amber, and not responding to pings.

After reading this forum for the last half hour regarding the multitude of people with this problem, i'm shocked that netgear is not trying to correct the situation with people with failed routers. RMA'ing us a new router at OUR cost is NOT A SOLUTION, especially when the company is to blame for the failure.

I refuse to jump through hoops to try to get another equally faulty router. I'm going to try to bring mine back to the retailer where I bought it tommorow, and exchange it for a d-link or a link-sys.

Netgear: Never Again.

If you ever want to contact me regarding this mis-hap, my email address is robnorris@gmail.com

As of right now, i'm no longer a Netgear customer.

Good day to you.
Rob Norris

I'm interested to see if I hear back from them, but i'm not holding my breath. I dunno. Hopefully futureshop will be more understanding at let me switch to another model.