Among the readers and tipsters of Consumerist are a brave band of explorers on a sacred mission to advance human knowledge. Their quest: to find really, really old crap sitting on the clearance rack at Walmart, and take photos so we can laugh at it. They are the Raiders of the Lost Walmart. Here are their latest finds from the field. [More]
modems
Raiders Of The Lost Walmart Will Take 10 Minutes To Download This Post Over A 56K Modem
By 1.25.13 — Updated: 8.15.13
Time Warner Cable Tells Customers “Oh, By The Way, You Now Have A Monthly Modem Rental Fee”
By 10.3.12
Time Warner Cable is irking an awful lot of customers, who recently opened their mail to find out that they are now going to be assessed a $3.95 monthly fee for renting the modem that is already in their home. [More]
Boost Your WiFi Signal With A Beer Can
By 8.5.11
Stressed out because your WiFi is too slow to get your work done? Crack open a cold one. Then dry it, slice it, and mount it on your router’s antennae. That’s right, you can boost your wifi just by doing some simple surgery on a beer can. [More]
Dial-Up Modem Noise 700% Slower Becomes Ambient Opus
By 6.30.11
Remember that Bieber track that turned into a symphonic masterpiece once it was slowed down 800%? Yes? No? Well you might as well kill yourself, Brian Eno, because here’s an old-school dial-up modem slowed down 700% , becoming an epic soundscape of terrifying drones and robotic wails, punctuated by tsunamis of static. Ah, it really captures the essence of what connecting to AOL in 1995 felt like. [More]
AT&T: Where Seven Months Equals Two Years
By 1.27.11
AT&T is a powerful company, but we didn’t know that they were powerful enough to interfere with the passage of time. Yet they are! They used their magic to take Mark’s seven-month-old DSL modem, and transform it into a 2-year-old DSL modem. [More]
Netgear Tech Support: Pay Geek Squad $139 To Troubleshoot Your $79 Router
By 9.29.10
What should you do when you have trouble with your Internet connection? N. tells Consumerist that his combination DSL modem and wireless router from Netgear simply won’t work. According to the ever-helpful technical support team at Netgear, there’s nothing left that they can do, and his only option left is to call the Geek Squad to perform a house call. If it didn’t require a $139 house call to troubleshoot a $79 device, N. might go along with this plan. [More]
Best Buy To Peddle Its Own Mobile Broadband Service
By 6.29.10
In a recent Sunday ad, Best Buy pimped Best Buy Connect, its upcoming mobile internet service. [More]
Comcast Claims Your Cable Modem For The Nation Of Comcastlandia
By 2.19.10
Jim owns a cable modem. It got old, so he got a new one. Now Comcast has claimed the old one as their property, says it has not been returned, and wants money. Jim does not want to relinquish the money, or the modem, to Comcastlandia and their colonization attempts. [More]
Developer Finds Security Hole In SMC Router Provided By Time Warner Cable
By 10.22.09
If you didn’t provide your own wireless router when you signed up for Internet access from Time Warner, you may have been given an SMC-branded modem/router combo that turns out is ridiculously easy to break into.
Vonage Sends 14 New Modems To Replace Customer's Broken One
By 10.21.09
My Linh’s Vonage modem stopped working, so she called to request a replacement under the terms of her service agreement. Vonage was happy to oblige. So happy, in fact, that they sent her 14 modems instead of one via UPS—but then couldn’t figure out how to get UPS to come pick them up again. Hey, they do VOIP, not logistics.
Comcast Raising Cable Modem Rental Fees This Fall
By 9.16.09
Comcast is going to start rolling out a $2 fee hike across the country this fall, which means your cable modem rental fee will go from $3 to $5 by the end of the year. Comcast says they absolutely have to do this or they’ll never be able to pay for service and equipment upgrades, which makes us wonder how the poor underfunded company manages to stay afloat at all.
Comcast Fixes Customer's Modem Problem After Stinky Installer Man Disappears
By 3.5.09
Earlier today, Jessica wrote to us about her Comcast horror story: there was something that smelled terrible, and the smell was coming from inside her apartment! He also hooked up her replacement modem incorrectly, so it still didn’t work, then said he’d be right back and drove off forever. Luckily, she was able to steal enough wifi to send an email to Comcast, and as of now the problem has been resolved.
Comcast Installer Also Installs Mud, Body Odor, In your Apartment
By 3.4.09
He is actually still here I as I e-mail you — I hate to be mean, but the BO is so bad, I am seriously choking. He left to get some parts out of the truck and the smell is so strong in my apartment I am going to need to open all of my windows for the rest of the afternoon just to get this smell out.
Time Warner Sends 12 Techs To Home, But "High Speed" Cable Remains A Fantasy
By 4.2.08
Thomas writes in to ask why Time Warner needs to send 12 different technicians to his home to get his Roadrunner speed up to the 10 mbits/sec that they promise in their advertising, as opposed to the 2.5 mbits/sec that he averages.
Comcast Quietly Leaches $3/Month From Former Adelphia Customers
By 1.10.08
A reader from Vermont writes in to let us know that he accidentally discovered Comcast has been charging him a $3/month modem rental fee for a modem he owned, because Comcast claimed that due to poor record keeping, it had no way of distinguishing between Adelphia’s modem renters and owners. This fee went on for months undetected because Comcast doesn’t itemize such fees on their online statements, only on their printed bills. (Well yeah, because including such details online would waste ink…wait, what?) When our reader called Comcast to have the fees refunded, he was told he’d have to provide proof of purchase for his modem.
Don't Activate Comcast's Internet Service Yourself Or They Will Block Your Modem
By 7.21.07
Why wait for Comcast to set up your internet service when you can activate it yourself? That’s what Alex and his roommates thought when they activated their service in June, unaided by a tech. Comcast had scheduled a tech to install Alex’s service, but the tech didn’t show until several days after his appointment, when he was told his services were not needed. This greatly angered Comcast:
“because [Alex’s roommate] called Comcast himself to set it up (in effect doing exactly what the tech would have done, had he bothered to show up), no one was being billed for our internet! So, instead of notifying anyone, they flipped the switch and turned it off.”
