ReadyNAS Ultra 4+ D.O.A. AARRGGHH!!

Hi PapaBear,

Amazon absolutely took care of me, and I will have my replacement either today or tomorrow. I take good care of them and they take good care of me. That's the way business should work.

As for the troubleshooting, I did try a different power cable (often called a "mains cable" - particularly outside the US). That cable is a known working cable. I knew that if I didn't do that, the "script readers" in tech support would want me to try that. I do realize that from time to time things don't go as planned and I accept this as an example of that, but I am very frustrated by the mentality that we should accept lower quality goods from China as a fact of life. I do business in China as well as the rest of the World, and I am in the technology manufacturing business. Oddly enough, service providers in China are very demanding, and we did well there because Chinese manufacturers could often not meet the technical requirements.

I changed jobs recently, going back to a former employer. We build optical transmission equipment for broadband telecom, and we build it all here in the US. We not only QA every active unit we ship, but we burn them in at temperature, which has our infant mortality rate at virtually zero. And yeah, we have to compete on price against the likes of Hwawei and ZTE. And we kick their ass. I outright reject the notion that quality must suffer to compete on cost. The problem is that management at virtually every public company is under ridiculous pressure from investors who want EPS at the exclusion of all else. I suspect that the institutional investors who are celebrating Netgear's record performance have NEVER asked about the company's quality program unless it was to question why expnses were up. My company is private and we have investors who understand that quality matters. From Netgear's most recent quarterly earnings report ...

(RTTNews.com) - Networking solutions provider Netgear, Inc. (NTGR) reported a profit for the fourth quarter that nearly doubled from last year, reflecting improved margins and 20 percent revenue growth. Both adjusted earnings per share and quarterly revenues topped analysts' expectations. The company also provided revenue guidance for the first quarter, in line with Street view.

Nowhere in there does it mention that those record profits are made possible because the people who used to make sure products work before they leave the factory are now unemployed.

I hope you are right, and that when my replacement ReadyNAS arrives it will perform flawlessly for years to come. I know this is more of a rant than I set out for it to become, and I don't consider Netgear evil, or in any way worse than much of their direct competition. I'm just disappointed that not even the simplest quality measures are deemed important anymore.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences. Now I have to go figure out why my fancy new laptop seems to be the only device in the house that cannot successfully execute a DHCP request. and so it continues ... :wink:

Ron