Back on March 15th, I ordered a Linksys WRT54G router. I know, I once vowed never to by Linksys products again, but that was before they were bought by Cisco, and before they came out with a router that was actually a small and very cheap Linux computer. There wasn’t much wrong with my old router except every now and then people coming to my web site would instead get the login screen for the router’s web interface (which would correct itself on a refresh). But this one, because it’s Linux and GPL, has many third party patches available to do all sorts of fun things.
Unfortunately, I ordered the router from a company called “BestBargainPC”, which also does business as “US-Depot.com”. They charged my card immediately, and their order status page said “Product will ship within 24 hours”. Unfortunately, it was still saying “…will ship within 24 hours” 15 days later. I attempted to email them, and didn’t get a response for a couple of days. So I attempted to phone them, and they never answered the phone even during their advertised business hours. That’s when I called up MBNA.
I have an MBNA credit card that I use for most of my on-line purchases, for reasons I talked about in What is the matter with this credit card? I’m glad that I’m still using it for on-line purchases, because they’re great. I phoned them up, and they said they’d take care of it, and now, about a week later, I get a letter saying that they’ve reversed the charge and any accumulated interest and late fees.
The router, which I ordered from Amazon the same day I called MBNA about the other company, arrived yesterday and I installed it already. Amazon charged me about a dollar more than the other place did.
I also went to Reseller Ratings to put in my feedback for bestbargainpc, and found that somebody else had the same experience during the month of March, after mostly favourable reviews before then.