My cable modem died a couple of days ago. All the lights still worked and stuff, but it would not connect. So, as a professional troubleshooter, I went through the paces, plugging it in to other cable outlets, leaving it for for an hour or so and trying again, etc. Nothing. So I called BendBroadband and talked to tech support; they wanted me to run through the steps on the sheet of paper from which they were reading, so I acted like I was doing that. Finally, they said, “yep, it’s broke.”

So I went down to their office, ready to give them the piece of shit broken Toshiba modem and drop $80 on a new one. But the dude at the counter was much more helpful, and finally, after 20 minutes of trying to track down a new modem, he decides I can trade my Toshiba straight across for a used, tested Motorola. Just like that, I had a working modem for nothing. It’s even the same model as the new ones they are selling. Wonderful, i tell you.