Cisco regraded

My replacement Linksys SD2008 switch arrived the other day - I think it was just over a week from when I called til I got the replacement - most of the delay was because I didn't have time to go to the post office.

Sadly, when I hooked the switch up, I found that three of the eight ports in it were bad (as in didn't work). This is a replacement part too. Nice.. It was clearly labeled as having been quality assured. I wonder what that means - did someone actually test all 8 ports? Or maybe they tested the LEDs? Either way, the new (refurbished, I think) switch was toast.

I called Cisco/Linksys "business" support and explained the whole thing - old switch died, we swapped, new switch has three bad ports, maybe we could call it an SD2005 ("5 port" rather than "8 port"), etc.. The guy on the phone opened a new RMA and said "don't worry, we'll pay for shipping for the defective one this time." Cool, nice of you guys. It was your crap product that died (twice now), but it's a nice gesture anyway.

Alas, the replacement is backordered. I have to wonder about that, which I did, aloud, while on the phone with support - "backordered? really? Is that because you realized they're all bad and you've decided to actually look to see what's causing them to die? Or maybe so many have died your stock of 'we think these might work' spares is gone?"

So that B+ you got when I first posted about this - I'm knocking you down one grade because you sent me a replacement that didn't work (feel free to blame FedEx, but you packaged it up for shipping, so it's on you either way); and then you're losing another half grade because it's been over a week since I called about the replacement being defective and you've still not sent me a new replacement (I should consider this a good sign, perhaps it means you're actually testing them before sending them.

Final grade, C-, sorry. You could have been a contender, but you dropped the ball this time.