Well, it seems Linksys Customer Service has jumped the shark. I've been a very long time supporter and purchaser (probably since a few months of them selling to consumers) of Linksys products but its looking like that is coming to an end.

Ironic that it was only last year that I was praising their customer service.

Here is a summary of the latest support attempt:

April 27 - After watching the online support chat thing spin for 4 hours I give up. I realize it was probably broken but it actually had activity displayed and said a rep would be with me shortly.

April 27 - approx 5pm - Sent in a support request by their website. Receive an automated response that they received the request, attached a ticket number to it and notified me that it would be handled by the next available technician.

April 28 - 1:07 am - Received a response by email. Obviously they didn't read my initial report of the problem because their answer was way off base and pointing me to two knowledge base articles that were way off base.

April 28 - I send a response back asking them to read my initial problem again and that the response they sent me has nothing to do with my problem.

April 29 - 6:31am - I receive an email with all kinds of apologies and that they need to send this to a 2nd level for assistance. Apparently I will be notified when they have a solution.

May 13 - I send an email saying I still haven't heard from anyone. No response.

May 18 - I try three times to get someone on the online support chat again. First two times I get dumped out after the rep comes online after considerable wait. After going through all the history again I'm told that they are having problems forwarding this to the proper department. All kinds of apologies and a promise that I would hear from 2nd level support within 24 hours.

May 19 - I get an email response from the initial support rep who handle the case. Just as useless as a response as the first. Again, obviously didn't read what the issue was and asked me to try something that I already detailed in the original request. Also this wasn't 2nd level support and I never did hear from them within 24 hours as promised. I have the chat transcript to prove they actually promised 24 hours.

May 19 - I respond saying that I haven't heard from 2nd level support and that the latest from this first rep again has nothing useful in regards to my problem.

May 25 - Still haven't had a response from them. I'll likely followup once again and see if they ever respond. Will update this post when necessary.

May 26 - Sent a followup email to let them know I still haven't heard from anyone.

May 27 - Received an email response with the usual insincere apologies and asking me to supply them with a bunch of information so they can call me back. I'm pretty sure they have all this info. I'll send a reply anyway.

May 27 - Received a call from Sam (a product manager I think he said). Very nice guy to deal with on the phone and was very helpful in debugging my problem. In the end, he decided to replace my router with a new one to see if that will resolve the problem. He said a new one should be shipping out today. One funny thing was that he thought the call was about an issue I had last November which was never solved then but just in chatting about it it was resolved in about a minute. Then we moved onto my current problem.

I was going to blog about this as it was happening but never got around to it. After seeing a post about Linksys on Wireless Bandit it reminded me to post this.

Update: Network World Fusion seemed to pick up on this here.