cannot sign in to openDNS account to set-up parental controls using NETGEAR Genie

Hi schumaku & other forum members who have subscrbied to this thread

Yes I bought this from an reseller and not direct from Netgear. I'm based in Australia so it was purchased from lareg retailer Harven Norman that operates throughout Australia. I paid $556 AUD for it so it wasnt cheap. It was the top of the range modem/router from Netgear at the time and the only reason I purchase this grade of router was for the parental controls to filter the internet for my kids.

I asked to escalate my call within the Netgear channel and specifically asked for a refund. I mention if a refund was not provided I was engage with Australian Consumer Protection division of our governmental fair trading departments (I wasnt bluffing either and I have used this in the past so am familiar with the process. Additionally I have enough evidence to show that this router has almost never been able to deliver the advertised function and I have engaged through all Netgear appropriate support channels included having carried out a full device swap). I have now returned my router to Netgear and they are in the process of processing my refund request (I believe its been approved). The process takes around 6-8 weeks of which I am now about 2 weeks through the process. I will let the forum know once the money hits my bank account.

Additionally I have managed to setup parental controls without the Netgear functionality that was advertised and for cheaper (under $450 AUD). I got a tip from @MrPink. Basically Netgear just use the free OpenDNS service to do their filtering. Anyone can point their router DNS to use OpenDNS and setup an OpenDNS account but the draw back is the internet is filtered for everyone. The great thing the Netgear router offers is being able to selectively choose which device uses OpenDNS and which doesnt. This can be achieved by setting up two networks with two routers. There are cheaper routers than the Netgear ones available on the market. I had bought a decent qualtiy TPlink router for around $350 AUD a while ago which replaced with the Netgear one I bought. I pulled this out of its box and then bought a cheaper Linksys secondary router for around $100 AUD. I then set up a secondary network using the cheaper secondary router and I use this for the kids. I connect their devices to a secondary network which routes through OpenDNS. My wife and I connect to the primary router/network for out internet.

There are some simple instructions for how to do so here (use the LAN-to-WAN setup and NOT the LAN-to-LAN one):

http://www.wikihow.com/Connect-Two-Routers

The secondary kids network is setup so that when devices get their IP address from DHCP they also get OpenDNS settings. The router DNS also points to OpenDNS DNS addresses. This works perfectly.

Hope this helps everyone. Its been a lot of work and because of this I would never consider Netgear ever again. But I am gettign to the end of this.