[amadeusw]

Given a choice of renting a router from Centurylink for $10/month and purchasing it for roughly $100, I purchased it a couple years ago. It already paid off for itself, but an interesting thing happened in December:

I received a phone call from CenturyLink saying that I'm eligible for free upgrade from 100Mbps to 1Gbps. Surprised with their benevolence, I double checked the agent to verify that this is not a scam. They ran some checks and determined that I will need to replace the router with a newer model to handle faster speeds. I said that I purchased the router from CenturyLink, and I'm ok swapping it for a newer model, as long as there are no extra fees, and that I will own (and not rent) the new model. They agreed to this. I got the new modem in mail, swapped it, got the gigabit speed and sent the original one back. Next month I saw a $10 modem rental charge. I called them, they argued, I argued back, they said that they'll need my permission to transcribe the earlier conversation (that's strange, because they always play the message that a conversation will be recorded). A few days later they called back saying that they transcribed the call, found out that they agreed to not renting the modem, apologized and gave me a refund.

I still don't fully understand why they offered me higher speed without paying more. I had no recording of the phone call and they had the upper hand, but they were fair in resolution. Overall, I had a very good run with Centurylink despite hearing only horror stories about American ISPs.

TLDR: Be very explicit on the call when someone offers to upgrade the modem that you own.