How a change to service lost a customer.

Earlier this year I passed comment on how good a service I’d had from Linksys (see here) but maybe I spoke too soon. The gist of it was that they gave me great service for a router that was about 5 years old.

Today I had the same problem once again and rang the same number once again. Today it was different, no longer were they able to support me unless I paid a small charge: All they wanted was £25.

Since when did £25 make a small charge?

I declined, reckoning that a replacement for the failing equipment wouldn’t cost too much more than the £25 “small charge”.  So off to PC World and 30 minutes later I was now the owner of a new router.

There was a choice in the shop: Belkin or Linksys. Similar in price, similar in capability. Guess which I bought.