Comcast Charges exorbinate rental fees, discourages or prohibits customer owned modems Sandy, Utah

Comcast charges rental fees of $7 per month for a cable modem that can be purchased for as little as $20 including shipping. Comcast refuses to connect customer owned modems for telephone service unless the deluxe model is purchased at the Comcast store inside Best Buy for over $170. Rental modems provided by Comcast are cheaper models. Customer service representatives lie to customers and will spend hours claiming they are attempting to connect a customer owned modem that is on the Comcast approved modem list, but "they just can't get it to work", and then tell customer to go to Best Buy and get the expensive model. This is true even when the customer owned model is identical to the rental unit. It appears that customer owned modems that do not include telephone service may connect to the internet automatically at this time.