Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This was a great learning experience. My new take on the "Amazon Star" rating process is to calculate ratio of low rating (1 or 2 stars) to the overall number of ratings and that will give you the percentage chance of having a bad experience with a product. Unfortunately, I fell into the 30% of the people that have had bad experience with this product. The real question for you as you're thinking about buying this product is "do I feel lucky or will I be the approximately 1 out of 3 people who get unlucky?". Some people like to gamble with hours of time on hold with tech support. Turns out I don't. I purchased this router to replace my Linksys wrt54gx. I have a network with 3 laptops and 5 other computers that worked fine (each computer can see the other) before installing the Dlink DIR 655. After installing the DLink and working for about an hour, I was finally able to get each individual computer to see the internet. Unfortnately, none of the computers could see each other, nor even respond to simple ping commands. Tech support calls went like this: Call 1 - nice rep, worked hard to understand and gave me a case number so I could call back in 15 mins to talk to a level 2 rep Call 2 - level 2 rep - explained the whole situation to the rep again and they put me on hold while they looked up some information. 10 mins later - click, I was magically disconnected Call 3 - level 2 rep again - ditto of call 1, but this time disconnected after 15 minutes Call 4 - Level 2 rep (Kelly), explained the whole situation again, simplifying it to say "I would just like to ping from Laptop A to Laptop B". Her response was that type of functionality was not covered by DLink support(????). She said that since my computers were all talking to the internet, their product was working and that any communication issues between my two laptops were my responsibility. Also that if I did want support, I had to call their networking department to get free support at 888-814-2882. When I told her I knew that was a $ per call support line, she lied and said it was not and tried to rush me off the phone. When I asked to speak with a manager, she said there were none available(????). When I got very specific and said that there were no managers or supervisors managing all of the tech support reps that evening, she said they all managed themselves. Given that she lied before about the $ per call support line, I didn't believe her, but what can you do. Call 5 - I called the 888-814-2882 number and indeed they are a per fee support line. The rep suggested I call back the original number and ask for a senior person. Call 6 - Called back the original number, gave my case id and asked for a senior person. The rep started asking me all the basic questions again and I politely asked for his name and ID, he kept talking over me and would not give his name nor id. When I politely persisted in asking for his name and ID started raising his voice and then yelled at me an hung up. Call 7 - Asked for the name and ID of the rep in case we got disconnected. He would not give them to me(he identified himself as George when the call started, but would not say his name again). He said the only process I could use to make sure I got support was to use my case id. When I explained that the other reps did not leave a comment or identifying mark on my case file, he said there was nothing he could do. I had high hopes for this router based on the reviews and I guess if you use it in a basic one computer or two computer network it works fine (maybe?). Don't bother with tech support, Linksys is head and shoulders above Dlink in this regard. This whole incident reminds me of the old fashioned off shore support that companies thought they could get away with a few years ago, but ended turning customers away and crashing their sales (Dell, Sprint, etc). I really wanted to love this router, but how can anyone buy something that really doesn't work as advertised, yet also isn't supported by the company or that you have to "pay" to get working out of the box? Sorry DLink - fix your product and support policies and maybe I'll come back one day.