Is Nighthawk a scam? Dangerous? Data collecting? Seems like it.
I bought this router/extender 3.5 months ago. Every single month so far, it shut down my internet access and the only way to get it back was to load that **bleep** app on my phone. As soon as I loaded the app, the network came back. This happened 4 times now. Every time I couldn't get the network back, all I did was load the app and the network came back instantly.
This indicates to me that you are collecting something, data, something, I don't know. There's no reason the app should be required to use your router or extender. I even factory reset this device, and set it up via the web page only. It wouldn't even connect to the internet once I set it up that way. I had to load the app, which said the router was not set up, but the network came back even with it saying not set up.
Today we had an 8 hour outage with xfinity and the network came back on the main xfinity router, but the nighthawk extender did not come back. I reboot it, nothing. I connected to it via the android app, boom, internet's back.
This is entirely unacceptable. There is no reason this app should be required to use your hardware. None whatsoever. I can't even access the router via the local web IP anymore, you guys disabled my access to it. It doesn't have a local IP anymore since I set it up and the android app can't even set it up.
You gave me a useless 3 month warranty with it, and don't even have support unless you pay for it. You are a terrible, scummy, greedy company. I used to like Netgear, way back. But you've changed, you've gotten way worse. The company should shut down, and never sell another product again. Forcing people to use android applications that collect god knows what in order to make your hardware operate. Shutting down your hardware if people don't want to use the android applications. Giving useless tiny warranties and support time limits. Absolutely horrific for a company to do. Very anti-consumer. I plan to make a fuss about this everywhere I can go. This is just, terrible. I'm so angry right now. Having to load an android app just to use my **bleep** extender.
I'm sure you'll hide my post, ban me so people can't hear my experience, whatever it takes to make yourselves look good. I already left my review on Amazon, and posted on the reddit. I'll continue to spread the word in other locations assuming this problem doesn't get fixed very promptly. This is truly terrible, I have no idea what kind of spyware your app is but the fact that its entirely required is just wrong.
