Technology Notebook

Wireless::Product::Opinion

Speaking of Wireless Bridges

I have a 802.11B wireless LAN. I tried out the NetGear ME100 wireless 802.11B bridge. I had a very bad experience with the online vendor I bought it from on Amazon and with Netgear tech support.

I own some good NetGear products and thought this purchase would be no different. After a couple hours on the phone with tech support he finally told me the product was defective and to return it to my vendor. I do. My vendor claims to test it out and it works just fine. I say "if the manufacturer's rep tells me the product is defective and to return it, the product must be defective." They ask for my support incident number. I lookup my support incident on the web and all I see there is it is under category of "possible parameter misconfiguration" and no notes at all about our telephone conversation. If that causes me to pay a 20% restocking fee or not get refund at all I will never buy another NetGear product again.

I *can* report that I drove to an actual store and bought a Linksys WET11 bridge and it was up and running 60 minutes later (including my drive home...)

I have yet to see any money back from the online vendor. And every reply e-mail I get from them is from a different e-mail domain. Good grief!