Router Problems

A friend of mine, who currently has his broadband through a company in the UK starting with the letter “T”, shall we say, has had a rather unpleasant experience with them

Recently purchasing an Xbox 360, he wanted to hook it up to the internet for online gaming. This requires a router to share the internet connection, and he wanted to buy a wireless router, so he doesn’t have to trail cable all over the house.

So, knowing that some routers don’t work well with certain internet providers (my old one AOL for example can’t work with most Belkin routers), my friend called his provider to ask their advice.

They happily transferred him to their sales department, advising him that they could get the right router for him.

He bought it, and it arrived promptly.

Unfortunately, it’s an ethernet/cable router. It only works with either cable broadband, or with telephone broadband that uses an ethernet ADSL modem (a rare thing indeed).
He has a USB ADSL modem. There’s no way on this green earth that these two devices will talk to each other. They don’t even have a compatible socket.

So he called his provider, and asked to return it for a refund or exchange it for one that works.

They refused.

He was a little taken back at this, so he asked if they would provide him with an ethernet ADSL modem, so he could get it to work.

They refused.

He asked why they would sell him a router that couldn’t possibly work with his internet set-up, and their responce was basically:

“It’s your fault as the customer for ordering the wrong router from us, even though it was you (the customer) taking our advice (which was wrong) on which router to buy.”

Sorry, hang on a second.

Their excuse is basically “we’re too stupid to sell you the correct router, but we’re not going to replace it because it’s in good working order.”

In what world is this acceptable behaviour?

If you took your car for a service and the mechanic called you at work and said

“The brake pads need replacing. Do you want to 720s or the 380s?”
“What’s the difference?”
“The 720s are a bit more expensive but they last longer.”
“OK, I’ll take the 720s then.”

And later that day, you had a car accident because the brakes failed to work, the mechanic could not turn around and say “Oh it’s not my fault. I asked him which ones he wanted fitted, and he said the 720s, but they’re not made for his car. They don’t fit.”

No! This is not on.

Luckily for him, I’m going to try it out at home and if it works, I’ll buy it off him.

But boy is he pissed…