Internet Stopped Working -- Netgear sent me a $400 modem as a gift

Backstory: I have XFINITY COMCAST as a service provider. On 3 April, my C7000 modem stopped working. Only would flash "Upstream" and no connection to the internet.

I contacted XFINITY and a tech came out and said, "Hm that's weird, I just had a lady this morning with the same exact issue with the same exact modem and I have no idea what it is. Your line is fine, you should contact NETGEAR" and he gave me a leased XFINITY modem.

So I go to netgear.com and see that if I am to get any service from them, I would need to pay a subscription service for their support. Fuck that.

I posted looking for help on their community forum and eventually, a Netgear Employee asked for me to PM him. I told him everything I tried up to that point. Power cycling, tech was out, factory reset etc. I sent him the DODCIS logs and a screenshot of the power levels.

Netgear asked if it was ok to send me a replacement C7000, so I accepted. The guy PM'd me and asked if I could contact him when I set it up. Well, I messaged him, an hour went by and nothing. So I called the customer support line which I got with the modem since it was "new" and under "warranty". Unfortunately, it directed me to an Indian Call Center which wasted an hour and a half of my life. Inevitably, they had me factory reset the thing and told me to call my ISP because it's my ISP's fault.

I messaged the guy that I called the call center.. 5 minutes later, the engineering team calls my cell phone and tells me "Do not waste your time with the call center.. I hope you didn't factory reset the thing" which I did. So they sent me out a NEW modem with a splitter coaxial cable.

I receive that in the mail and they give me a call. They have me connect the Xfinity modem and the Netgear modem they just sent me to my computer. They have the entire engineering team and some developers (6 people total) remote into my computer and do some debugging for 5 hours and eventually, the upstream light comes on, and they are done for the night.

I check the community pages and see that others are having the exact same issue to the C7000. I ask the netgear engineering team about it and they tell me it's not a widespread problem yet, but they're trying to nip it in the butt before it becomes one. So I am the focus of their fix action.

They email me the next day, telling me they're sending me two different model modems to test on my network and a laptop so they don't take up any of my time. After four hours of debugging yesterday, they found the root cause to the problem (i think).

The engineering team calls me and says as a token of their appreciation if I see any Netgear product I like, let them know and they'll give me one. You better believe I went to their site and searched "Price Highest to Lowest" and grabbed the $400 modem. I emailed their engineer back with the modem model and he says, "That's a good choice, I have that at home. We'll overnight it to you tomorrow".

So here I am sitting waiting for my new modem to arrive.

 

My coaxial port is in my guest bedroom too. So I had to stretch every cable I had in my possession to get everything connected without buying anything new. Computer -> USB Hub -> USB Extender -> USB -> Router -> Coax -> Splitter -> Coax -> Wall