said by tshirt: And I bet part of that is the (understandable to some degree) mindset of customers, that NOTHING could possibly be wrong with THEIR garage sale modem, still smoking from the lightning strike... Just as some ISP's who allow customer owned often insist it MUST be your modem.
Neither end wanting to accept possible failure of any equipment any time makes a simple over the phone first stage of troubleshooting, far more difficult than it should be.
Ironically, I bought the $5 garage-sale modem for the new Sonic line after a lightning strike smoked/melted the NID and the NIC, the filter, the inside wiring and the RJ45 jack. Somehow the desktop was unharmed. This, in a place where "it never rains", at least according to Mr. Hammond. It was an amusing week, with a brigade of bucket trucks.
I believe that Dane, you and Battlepro are correct, that customer service works best overall when the ISP controls the modem inventory. But that shouldn't preclude a purchase option. I'd rather have a hot-spare on site, ready to swap in and disprove the ISP's incompetech notions, and save 3-8 days' worth of misery, than wait for Sonic's "advance replacement" to arrive and not work.
