Freebox: stuck on fixed rectangle

Hello everyone,

My mother has been struggling for several months to get internet at her home...

She had signed up with Orange, but they were charging her over 70 euros a month (for video games and a bunch of other services she wasn’t using), so she left;

Then she tried Alice, but it never worked and they went bankrupt;

Then she went with SFR but they never delivered the box (since early February 2008!!!! and now it's the end of May 2008);

Now I told her to go with Free. We got the equipment delivered quickly (6 days ago), the line (total unbundling) has been activated properly, the box is syncing well but it ***stays stuck on the fixed rectangle.***

We've called their hotline many times; they are really annoying, the only thing they can do is check if it’s the correct MAC address (it's been checked at least 10 times lol) and ask us stupid questions like:

* "Are the connections okay?" (the answer is YES obviously lol)
* "Are there any capacitors on the telephone jacks?" (the answer is NO obviously), etc...

and they tell us to do hard reboots (I do hard reboots every hour lol)

Anyway, in my opinion (and I think I know a little about this), the problem is on their end.

They requested a small test... we're still waiting for a response, and my mother has an appointment with a technician next week (!!!) who will probably ask for more tests (???).

The problem is that I'm going back to Canada the day after tomorrow, and I'm really worried about leaving her alone without a phone for an indefinite period, and especially leaving her alone with a technician who will surely try to trick her into paying the 49 euros.

(I'm worried because I read a testimony from a guy who had a technician come, and the technician insisted that there were capacitors in his phone jack, even though he had checked everything beforehand... so he ended up with the 49 euros charge).

I just want to gather information from other internet users who have had the same kind of problem.

Because I think it's easy for them to do the following:

When someone new subscribes, they send the box as quickly as possible, but make sure it doesn’t work... after a while, the customer loses it and requests an appointment with a technician. The technician comes and ensures that the fault is attributed to the customer, so the customer pays 49 euros. But since he "manages" to make everything work, the customer is still happy that it's working and agrees to pay.

I’m probably a bit paranoid, but I’m so wary of all these guys!!! Especially my mother, she won’t necessarily be able to stand up to them (she knows NOTHING about technology).

All comments are welcome.

Thank you for reading my post (a bit long, I know, and I'm sorry about that).

- Qwerti.

*** Why is it so difficult to have functioning internet in 2008????????