Feedback for R7000 New firmware 1.0.9.18

After receiving zero support from Netgear to fix a situation I should never have been in in the first place I decided to move to dd-wrt on the advice of a friend.

It works perfectly and is stable.  The sad part of this is a firmware that only 2 guys write is more stable than the manufacturers recommended firmware.

Feedback for Netgear:

1. Now that I've seen you try and charge $50 for tech support on products older than 1 year I won't ever buy a netgear product until this changes.  For the price of the router and the fact that this issue was of Netgears own making thanks to their own automatic update support for this should be free.  If the issue was "I tried to custom flash the firmware and it failed and now I want to go back to Netgears firmware" then yes charge away for that support.    If the device was no longer being produced and therefore it was more difficult to be supported due to needing to know older technology then yes charge for this.  But this is an active router still being sold, updated with netgears own auto-update code, there should never be a charge for this support.

2. As soon as problems occurred with the firmware it should have been removed so that other users didn't find themselves in similar situations.

3. I understand the point of community forums, but community forums for manufacturers can only be successful if members of the manufacturer actually take an active role in the forum.  Give feedback, provide estimates, as a developer I typically know how long some work will take and find people will be reasonable if they are given timelines, and yes you can add the caveat of "the developer anticipates a 3 day fix but if further issues are found this may slip, we will keep you advised".