While it's sad, it's their own fault. I would never ever update my system if I didn't see GW3D in front of my firmware version. Apart from that I would never ever add legit WiFi-profiles to my SysNAND. There are many offline-methods available using your PC, router, tablet, phone, ...
I wouldn't blame the consumers, I blame gateway for not uploading a detailed setup video, instead they rely on the community to make them, but most people don't think to check youtube, and when they do there wasn't any videos for until hours after the launch. IMO this release is a buggy mess, I could never recommend a gateway for n3ds ATM especially for the average gamer who isn't tech savvy.
IMO if you did this with a N3ds, forget the nand mod and just get a sky3ds, imo it's much better then buggy gateway 3.1. Sell your gateway for a profit locally, you can easily sell it for 100$ as people don't like to wait and 150$ if you set it up for them with games as the majority of gamers have no idea how to use a gateway and they don't care to learn. Then purchase a sky3ds for 70$, (what I paid) and your done.
You don't need gateway for homebrew anymore and if you are on firmware 9.2 or lower you can even get regiom free. So then eal benifit of gateway was the multi rom menu but the process to get gateway running on a n3ds is to slopy imo, and now the sky 3ds has becomes the cart that's faster and easier to use.
The only real downside of the sky3ds is the lack of eshop game support, like virtual console games but sky3ds is trying to find a fix with this. Sky3ds also works on any firmware version and with any 3ds console.
Anyone who recommends Gateway for the N3DS over sky3ds to friends who never hacked a thing in their life, then you are doing them a disfavour and will most likely brick/update their systemnand. When gateway was the only kid on the block, sure but now nope.