Since many people have waited for so long and are now fed up with Belkin , I am opening a new topic for all return/refund related information .

Some have already reported success .
I am going to try and have this thing refunded too , but have not contacted my reseller yet .

Any question , any information to post around the subject ? Shoot .

Edit : I just issued for a refund  (by the webshop I purchased it from) . Saying it was advertised as an open source router that can run openwrt but it doesnt .

Edit2 : refund accepted . One funny thing is : on the rma document they set for reason "crashes whole the time and needs a poweroff daily" . I did not mention any of this , the reason I gave them was "it does not run openwrt and there is no source of the wifi drivers available ." They must have had more returns for this product for sure

I ordered an Asus RT-AC68U to replace it .

(Last edited by CrimInalA on 12 Aug 2014, 14:51)

FYI - RT-AC68U doesn't have open source support either (DD-WRT that doesn't release Broadcom source doesn't count).

(Last edited by drawz on 12 Aug 2014, 22:43)

@drawz : I dont see Asus advertising being opensource anywhere . Im not sure what the issue is for you , but if you are looking for an opensource device I would say dont buy the Asus RT-AC68U . But then again , dont buy the WRT1900ac either .

(Last edited by CrimInalA on 13 Aug 2014, 07:27)

Thank you CriminalAI for creating this topic.

I just explained the situation to Amazon, which agreed to refund the router. I am sending it back, although with nostalgia.

Now I just have to find something more or less similar with OpenWRT support...

It seems all retailers are accepting refunds on the router pretty easily without asking questions . Makes me think most of them already have had tons of returns on this product .

Amazon also refunded my WRT1900, even past the 30 day return window.

I bought a R7000 to replace it and have been happy since.

Silly me, I thought you were looking for a router that *did* support open source, since the lack of that feature is why you are returning the WRT1900AC. If you don't care about open source, wouldn't the WRT1900AC work just fine?

Also, if you're here on this forum, I assume you're interested in running OpenWrt, so I also thought you'd want a router that worked with that (the RT-AC68U does not). Maybe I'm just losing my mind...

>> If you don't care about open source, wouldn't the WRT1900AC work just fine?

Actually no. Even the latest version of the official firmware is very buggy (my unit is on the latest update and still keeps rebooting and losing settings).

The stock firmware is also very feature-limited compared to most others I've seen.

I'm guessing the clueless marketing types at Belkin were already thinking that the stock firmware need only be a placeholder since anyone buying this unit would almost certainly be planning to replace the stock firmware with an opensource one that would magically appear from nowhere. That would have been OK if they actually did anything to help make sure it existed or even just check it could exist before they started selling the product and advertising it as such.

I was originally thinking that the reason my particular unit was resetting/losing config was probably a hardware fault causing it overheat because on my unit the fan you can see by looking through the top holes never seems to run. I live in Phoenix where normal daily temps are well over 100f outside so my ac keeps the house around 84f. Also my WRT1900AC is in proximity to other heat-emitting electronics so I'm VERY surprised that I've not noticed the fan ever run yet.

...but I gather from this forum that I'm far from the only one that experiences regular resets/loss of configuration, so now I'm really not sure if my unit's hardware is OK or not. Please can anyone else with a WRT1900AC confirm if they ever see its fan running or not?

Regardless it is VERY clear that Linksys/Belkin rushed the WRT1900AC to market with a minimal and buggy firmware (and possibly also a bad hardware design), and have put very little resources/commitment into fixing it or keeping the customers happy since.

I've owned the unit for maybe 3 months now and haven't even tried taking it back to Best Buy for a refund as I'm way beyond their 15 day policy. I did phone Linksys but they refuse to do anything as I didn't buy it direct on line from them, which shows how little they care about their own customers.

The only reason I haven't tried forcing it back on Best Buy (because of false advertising), or even simply junked it and got something else yet is that there doesn't appear to be any other 11ac routers out there can run any opensource firmware either. At least Belkin are apparently still claiming they are working towards the 1900AC being able to do so at some point.  If another 11ac router comes out that can definately run OpenWRT or tomato, I will dump the 1900AC fast. I'm REALLY hoping the Asus RT68U will get supported, although it seems very unlikely.

I already knew Belkin had a crap reputation, I just did not know they now owned Linksys. Because of all these issues with the WRT1900AC and their clear lack of commitment to fix it or even offer refunds, I feel like I've been screwed over and Belkin are laughing all the way to the bank with my money. Consequently there is not a chance in hell I will ever again buy any Belkin or Linksys product.

Is anyone aware of, or even interested in any class-action lawsuit over this starting up?

(Last edited by justniz on 21 Aug 2014, 19:02)

The TP-Link Archer C7 runs OpenWrt just fine and supports 802.11ac. The Netgear R7000 works under DD-WRT and I think there was some work toward support in Tomato. I'd get the Archer C7 personally.

@justniz : Try to get a refund from Best Buy . It should not be hard as I've seen many posts of people returning it without the reseller giving them a hard time . Me included . I was shocked on how easy they took it back and refunded my money . It looked like many more people before me had requested refunds and resellers know about the issues the routers have by now . I had used my router for over 4 months , so also way past the normal return limit . Got a 100% refund .

Returning the units would hurt Belkin more than starting a class action imo

Now for the router to get instead , I can highly recommend the Asus RT-AC68U which I got . It runs DD-wrt if you want . altough DD-wrt is not my favourite anymore since their beta and stable releases are untrackable and all over the place . That is my opinion .
There are also Tomato builds for it (http://tomato.groov.pl/tomatoanon.php?m … -AC68R%2FU) , but I'm waiting for a build with less known issues before I'm flashing my beloved tomato on it (actually I will wait till advanced tomato runs on the unit , I like that the most) .
For now , I'm running Merlin WRT on it . It has got all the options I need at the moment , supporting scripting , openvpn , logfiles , monitoring , wifi tweaks and so on .
And the best part is , I got the unit for more than 100€ less compared to the WRT1900

You said this really well btw :

(Last edited by CrimInalA on 24 Aug 2014, 08:32)

I think its simply bad units that exist. I bought mine over a month ago at Best Buy. Running the latest firmware and updated it right out of the box. Zero issues. No random reboots or any thing like that. Stability over features imo. Not others share the same. But, this router has been a set and for get deal. I came from a Linksys E4200 v1 that was a little over 3 years old. During the time. I ran stock firmware for the first year and then Tomato firmware for the remaining. Never a problem with either and the unit still works fine today. I only replaced it do to age. WRT1900AC is a solid and stable router that is very simple to use. That is what the majority of consumers like. I don't like how Linksys is handling the 3rd party firmware. That is another story.

I've read on the linksysforums about people who returned a unit 3-4 times . All same issues , so your statement seems very unlikely at this point .

But please keep on topic with questions about returns/refunds , successes and issues .