Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

We purchased the Netgear N300 router to replace our aging (but highly reliable) Linksys for home; we have a number of streaming video devices that needed the extra computing juice of the Netgear. The product was easy to set up, and handled traffic seemingly without a hitch for two months. We began to notice, with increasing frequency, loss of connectivity at both the wired and wireless level. This problem was isolated to the router itself; swapping in our old, trusty router would always immediately fix this problem. Since we were having such tremendous problems with the router, I called Netgear support, located in a call center in India, about two and a half months after purchasing the router with the intent of securing an RMA. However, after more than an hour on the phone, the technician told me I would need to bring in yet another computer to test the networking issue; he seemed convinced (against all reason) that this was due to a networking issue with the computer plugged into the ethernet port. Despite my protests that this was a hardware issue, he proceded to ignore my request for an RMA and demanded that a second computer would be needed to test this issue before he would issue an RMA. Whil I did not feel that his request was reasonable (since all of the evidence pointed to a hardware issue with the router), I told him I would call back with the case number when I secured a second computer. I called back three weeks later with a second computer in hand. I spoke to a second technician, who indicated to me -- against all of the evidence to the contrary -- that there was nothing wrong with my router because all of the lights on the front of the unit were on. "So," he concluded, "it can simply could not be that your router is misfunctioning, sir, this is an impossibility." The technician went on to tell me that "we are very sorry, but we cannot issue an RMA because the unit is clearly not defective. This is a IP issue, sir." The technician then went on to state that the IP address issue would be simple to fix, but unfortunately my technical support for the router was 90 days and had expired, so that Netgear would only be able to fix this issue if I purchased a "technical support contract, sir, that will allow us to provide technial support for not only your router,but any electronics you own, even your blackberry, sir." The price of the support contract was $69.99 for 6 months, or $109.99 for 1 year. I expressed my outrage, indicating there was no hope that I was going to pay for such a contract when a new router cost $79.99. I told them that I believed that this was a hardware issue, and requested an RMA. The technician completely refused to honor my request, said he would transfer me to his technical agents for futher evaluabiton, and then the line was cut off. I have to say that I have purchased other products, such as a ReadyNAS, from this company; after this experience, Netgear has lost my business forever. I'd go so far as to say my experience with Netgear was one of the worst I've ever had with a vendor, and it felt like they were trying to run a scam. I'd urge those of you who are considering the purchase of this product, or other Netgear products, to take the technical support into your purchasing decision. Lest you think this is simply sour grapes, if you look through the reviews, you can see that I am not alone in my experience with Netgear customer service. Do you really want to deal with a company that treats its customers like garbage?