NETGEAR Nighthawk CAX30S Modem/Router Bricked by 02/21 Firmware Update.

TL;DR: NETGEAR Nighthawk CAX30S modem/router bricked by NETGEAR's 02/21/2023 firmware update. Because the unit is out of warranty, NETGEAR says there is nothing they can do and I will have to buy a new device.

Early Tuesday morning, my NETGEAR Nighthawk CAX30S modem/router stopped working. While I was at work, my wife began troubleshooting by restarting the router and calling our ISP. As many have reported, the ISP could see that the signal was fine, but the modem was not pushing out and signals and the WiFi radios were not transmitting. 

Fast forward to Wednesday. My ISP sends a technician out to review my equipment and setup and installs an ISP provided modem to make sure everything is working. I only setup this technician appointment BEFORE I knew that there was an issue with CAX30's thanks to NETGEAR's poor response to the situation. After the technician left, I was about to throw the entire unit away but decided to do a quick search on Twitter and saw that others were reporting the exact same issue as myself at the exact same time.

Anyways, I come home yesterday and throw in the cable to see if the router is responding and it appears that is is recognizing ports again as my Xbox was showing that something was connected to the ethernet port. Naturally, I called my ISP to have them activate the MAC address and upon activation the unit restarted and no longer worked. XFinity (NOT my ISP) was kind enough to tweet out a number to call for issues with this (I refuse to allow NETGEAR to extort money out of me for an issue they caused by paying for their support).

So, I call NETGEAR and am on hold for about an hour when I am connected with Sanker (34535683). Sanker and I attempted a hard restart of the modem and after that did not work he informed me that there we had exhausted all of the troubleshooting steps that were available (LOL). He then proceeded to ask what I would like to do. I stated that I would like the unit replaced or a timetable or assurance (IN WRITING) that new firmware would be pushed to the device at some point in the near future. Sanker told me this was not possible as the unit has been out of warranty for 8 months. After this statement, I requested to speak to a supervisor. Sanker told me that a supervisor would call me back in 30 minutes or so.

The supervisor called me in around 2 minutes. This individual's name was Ash. Ash simply reiterated to me that the unit is out of warranty and there is nothing they can do. He then stated that NETGEAR sent out another firmware update that fixed this issue in 95% of the affected units (He stated that this was not an exact measurement but a justifiable estimate). His recommendation was that I...BUY A NEW MODEM. I stated my frustration with his suggestion as NETGEAR is the one who bricked the modem and I had nothing to do with its failure. He repeated that this was not possible and reiterated that the unit was out of warranty. After about 15 minutes of arguing and stating that I will never buy a NETGEAR product again, he agreed to elevate my case to the customer care team. It should be noted that this individual REFUSED to comply with my request to put in writing that NETGEAR's firmware update bricked my modem and that their recommendation was that I purchase a new unit. I recorded this part of the conversation so that I had proof of this blasphemous suggestion. This individual told me that he would call me back this morning around 8:30am Eastern. He just called me to let me know that there is no update on my case and that they will call me when there is an update.

This response to an issue that was created by NETGEAR is unacceptable.

In terms of troubleshooting, I have tried to hard restart the modem in 10, 15, 30, and 60 second intervals. I cannot access the traffic meter or any router settings as the WiFi radios are not transmitting so the SSID is not even showing up. Additionally, any hardwire connection is not being recognized by any device. Therefore, I cannot simply utilize Tftp to push the previous firmware to the router. All in all, I am stuck. I will post some attachments relating to the issue.

Here is the phone recording of NETGEAR Support admitting fault and suggesting that I buy a new router

https://www.reddit.com/r/NETGEAR/comments/11ajpst/cax30s_modemrouter_bricked_by_0221_firmware/