Existing Customer Unable to Assign AC2200 Login Passwords

I was able to set up my brand new AC2200 per the enclose dinstructions and then move it physically to our garage where my son has his PC, phone and a bunch of other devices he wants to connect with a strong signal.  It worked well from the get-go.  Actually GREAT on both 2.4 Ghz and 5.0 Ghz bands.  A huge signal boost. Much more than I expected.

 However, out of the box the AC2200 comes configured "wide open".  No paswords required to connect. So anybody driving down our street now has acccess to all the devices on our private network.

To state the obvious, this is not proper at all and even sort fo dumb from a customer relations perspective.  But that's the way it is.  Yes, that's fixable by running additional setup after the initial install.  But the gotcha' here is that when I ran the app at www.mywifeext.net while contected to the new extended wifi network, by clicking on the NEW EXTENDER SETUP button, it wanted me to create an new NetGear account. This is the only web page option provided.  

So what wrong with that?  Well, I have at least a dozen other NetGrear devices, including an active NetGrearWNDR4500v2 wifi router that I am extending from.  I've previously set these devices up, registered most of them them, and registered myself on the customer support and support forum using the only public email address I have. So here I didn't need to setup a new account, I needed to log into my existing NetGear account.

Regardless, I did try and use my info over again, to register yet again within the process.  Several times in fact.  But an "INVALID REQUEST" error message appeared each time after I entered all the info on my phone (I had to use my phone since my PC is hard wired rather than wifi) via the usual long, painful process.  I believe it's safe to hazard a guess here:  The web app threw up because I'm already setup and the app won't let me use my email address again. (And yes, a more informative message would have been helpful too.)

Anyway, next I clicked the back bottom in my broswer (Andriod Chrome), and then unexpectedly, the opporutnity to login into my existing NetGear account did appear.  Wow!  This feature wasn't documented, but this looked like a hopeful sign. But alas, after I entered my existing login credentials, which I believe were accepted, the web session hung "forever" while displaying a screen message along the lines "wait a moment..." (probably not those exact words).  I tried the process several times, from fresh browser sessions, also using Andriod Firefox, with exactly the same results.  I also logged into my Netgear account NetGear Support (which is how I'm submitting this email) and reassiged my password to make sure this was not an issue.  Still no cigar.

So here's my question:  Given I'm an existing NetGear customer.  How to I access the Ac2200 setup so I can assign password protection on both new wifi bands created by my AC2200 extender, and do this without setting up another Netgear account?

I'm going to leave this device up overnight, to my son's delight.  But if this isn't solveable by tomorrow I'm going to unplug the darned thing and return it to Amazon.  Too bad too, it is potentially a trully oustanding product.  

Note to NetGear product management: Besides fixing the web app snafu, this product should come pre-configured from the factory like your routers.  With a default user name and a default password.  Frankly I'm dumbfounded that this is not already being done.