So they are overrun with customers, staff working their asses off already - and the author suggests putting work into supporting rare edge cases like customers bringing their own modem? Shouldn't they just remove that option entirely to streamline their flow, and ditch the ultra-rare customer who demands that? Sure, every customer wants a perfect experience super customized to their exact situation, but that's not how you run a business. Some of the biggest successes like Apple and McDonalds just pick some reasonable defaults, options, and cost per user levels and then that is that, no super advanced configuration, and the savings are huge. Just the lack of many different hardware configurations does wonders for Apple's software not running into problems and wonders for the hardware ordering cost savings (for the business).
For the same reason that they should make sure every tech has a functioning screwdriver? Everything that adds 5 minutes to an appointment adds up.
The success of e.g. Apple is because they wake a product that works, not because of some nerdy argument about settings. If your product is getting a tech to show up within an N-hour timeframe, you need to find ways to engineer that.
Of course, as has been pointed out up thread, most cable companies don't have to care if their appointments are reliable, so they don't, and whichever department made that web form probably wasn't accountable either.
