[ergothus]

I've bought my own router and had Comcast later claim it was theirs (because they collected the SN off it, and put it in their system, then later, lo and behold, the SN is in their system).

I've had issues, called them, they say it's likely a router issue, then when the tech arrives they HAVE NO EXTRA ROUTER, so I had to take a second time off work.

You're screwed either way, but I do feel you overstate the difficulty. Installing my own router was actually the same procedure as when they rented me a router. The "techie" part is if you don't want to install all their crappy spyware, but otherwise, it's plug in, hit a website, and press the power button when prompted, which is exactly what they had me do regardless of who owned the router.