My wireless modem (the USBConnect Mercury made by Sierra Wireless) arrived last night and though I wasn’t able to try it out right away without a USB extension cable (I’ve ordered one but it hasn’t arrived yet), I did download the software from Sierra Wireless’s site to be prepared for it. At work this morning, I borrowed a cable and tried it out, and it worked brilliantly for all of 10 seconds, and then abruptly stopped working. I did immediately think that something went wrong with the modem internally, but valiantly tried to troubleshoot and get it working again. In the end, I spent far too much time trying to get it to work and Sierra Wireless support deemed it broken and eligible for return after much angst and irritation on my part.
I had to go through a round of troubleshooting with AT&T tech support first, which was absolutely USELESS. The script-driven and inattentive support specialist kept sending me PC instructions and gave me information in direct conflict with what I’d found on Sierra Wireless’s site own support site. Idiots. Needless to say, I gave the worst possible scores and scathing commentary in the customer feedback survey right after, not that it will actually change anything about how they operate…
I have purchased refurbished items before and had no problems. The best example was a Blackberry 8700c from AT&T a couple of years ago that looked brand new and performed flawlessly. My refurbished stuff luck has apparently run out, though I think I’ll have no choice but to get another refurbished modem as a replacement for this one. I need to look at AT&T’s policies first to see if I need to return this by mail or if I can simply bring it to a local store to get a replacement. At this rate, it will be some long, convoluted process that will require me to package it in exactly 3.79 sheets of bubble wrap in a blue box sent via unicycle courier. Ugh.
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