Here's a fun trick Comcast is now playing with in Chicago. For unlimited data, it costs $50 a month if you're using your own modem, but using Comcast's modem, I get a "discounted" rate of $20 a month including the modem rental.

It's their way of charging me to use my own modem (which I believe is illegal), hidden behind the ruse of it being a discount to rent theirs.

Comcast in Washington is $10/mo

5/mo is 120 over 2 years, which is imo the expected life on a modem. Now of course some last 5 years or more, but then some last 6 months. I think 60/year is a decent price for a 100 percent satisfaction guaranteed working modem.

> which is imo the expected life on a modem

Then buy better modems. My current modem is 4 years old and functions as well as it did on day 1.

If they weren't making money on it they wouldn't sell it to you as an option. Sure the "insurance" might be nice, but overtime they're making money off of you.

> for a 100 percent satisfaction guaranteed working modem.

Importantly, the company I mention historically had such a bad satisfaction experience that it was rated lowest for customer experience. Such issues that they rebranded. With their contractor model it was regularly the experience of customers that the install goes through 2 or 3 cheap cable modems until one worked; in combination with their Mac locking, dns poisoning data caps, almost daily scheduled downtimes.

Though I'm still not sure how it's a decent price to pay $120 for something that retails for $60.

Satisfaction guaranteed. Don't like the service? Move along, you're out very little/nothing.

This would be a good argument if:

* there was any choice in the market * my satisfaction was actually guaranteed * The cost of switching was low (it will take at least a day of coordination to end one service, and start the second)

Where are you living where modems die every 2 years? My cable modem/wifi router from ISP is about 5 years old. Can't use your own cable modem in UK. They don't list providing of the modem as a line item on the bill either

Officially the EU requires allowing customers to use their own modem if they want to. If the ISP setup requires registering MAC addresses they are obligated to register your personal modem and if a weird setup is required they have to document everything and notify you in advance of changes.

Do you have any more details about this? A link or what to search for would be also great.

The directive is 2008/63/EG.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:32...

Can only see one example of someone asking about that on google.

I do not understand what you mean by that. Note that these directives force the member states to adopt their own laws implementing them. They do not directly affect people, only indirectly. So if people want to invoke the rights they have to cite the national law implementing the directive.

The response in the UK is always "you can't do that", so either the UK hasn't implemented the law, or no one cares

The directive stipulates some authority who enforces the rules.

It’s quite possible that, similar to the situation in the Netherlands, the rules don’t align with the opinion of the appointed authority and any appeal is nullified by an endless stream of denials and delays.

For a truly determined citizen or group it would be possible to work through the national and European legal system and force the authority to do its job but it takes a very long time and a lot of money and determination.