Netgear ac1900 warranty refusal

I purchased my Nighthawk router on July 26, 2019 from Best Buy. It has worked fine until about a month or so ago. The router no longer allows internet access. We have been through technical support with our internet provider because we first suspected the issue was with them. They first did everything they could remotely to try to get it working, resetting the modem, logging in, etc. Finally we had a technician come out to diagnose the issue. After checking all connections and machines, their service was totally fine, but the router was not allowing access. After that, we contacted Netgear support and were informed that we could not file a warranty claim unless we paid for the extended technical support. Then they would walk us through all the steps that were tried by the other technicians. If that didn’t work, then they would issue a claim. This is only after we paid the fees for the technical support and then probably have to pay to ship it back to Netgear for them to check it out. So the one year warranty is basically worthless without paying additional fees for them to tell us the router isn’t working. After being on the phone with them for a couple of hours, we got nowhere and hung up exasperated. We then went and purchased another router, plugged it in, and were back on the internet within the hour. This further shows the router was the issue. We put the old router aside for a couple of weeks and then we decided to try again with Netgear customer support because paying $200 for a router that lasts less than one year and then being told that the warranty can only be used if we buy extended technical support is hard to stomach. After another hour and a half on the phone, the support person told us that the router is perfectly fine and if we just bought the extended support, we would be able to use the router again. I guess it magically fixed itself. He had us plug it in and because certain lights lit up, he was able to assure us everything was perfect. I didn’t even know what to say. So after all that, we have a non working $200 brick that we can’t send back or use, a new router we already purchased and now can’t return, and technical support people who patronize us and tell us that the issues we have aren’t really issues.