‘Somebody had to see that before they shipped it out’: Spectrum customer receives router with a live roach colony inside

People have a lot of strong opinions on internet service providers—many of them negative. It's easy to see why they're so maligned. Many ISPs lure customers in with attractive initial price points, then jack up the cost of their service after the first year, effectively penalizing you for being a loyal customer.

However, one TikToker's gripe with Spectrum doesn't have to do with the internet provider's cost of service. User Fleur (@resilient.fleur) was shocked that the company would send her a router that was infested with cockroaches, nearly resulting in her home being filled with pests.

@resilient.fleur

I went outside to put this thing in a garbage bag to make sure the roaches don’t get out and more of them had came out of the sealed equipment 😓🤮

♬ original sound - Resilient.Fleur

In the clip, she shows the router, which is wrapped in clear plastic. Cockroaches can be seen walking between the router itself and spaces in the transparent seal which prevents them from escaping into her home.

"Just to be clear, so y'all know I'm not exaggerating—that thing is inside the plastic," Fleur says. "Inside the plastic, crawling through a bunch of dead roach bodies. Look at all that that's roach poop."

She then re-positions the router to show a different angle of the bug waste inside of it.

"Roach legs, old, crispy, roach legs," she continues. "So it's been like this cause these things are dried out."

The TikToker then lifts up the router to show off the bottom of it on camera. "A baby one, alive and moving," she narrates. The bug begins to crawl and the Spectrum customer is disgusted. Fleur drops the router down back on the leather chair.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God," she exclaims before the video cuts out.

She added that she saw even more cockroaches crawl outside of the router when she took the device outside to place in a trash bag.

"I went outside to put this thing in a garbage bag to make sure the roaches don’t get out and more of them had came out of the sealed equipment," she shared.

As gross as it may sound, it turns out that bugs getting inside of electronic equipment, laying eggs, and starting a miniature insect civilization is a common enough of occurrence that there are guides on how to rectify this problem.

Pest & Lawn Solutions suggests spraying Novacide, a bug-killing agent, around one's electronics, rather than directly on them, to kill the roaches. Then, they suggest using dry cleaning tools to remove all eggs and fecal matter (while wearing plastic gloves) after opening them up with a screwdriver.

CertSimple also posted a guide on best practices for keeping roaches outside of your WiFi router, and it all starts with keeping them dry and clean.

For many TikTokers who watched Fleur's video, however, they seemed just as horrified upon seeing the bugs crawling in and out of her new computer equipment.

"Absolutely not!!!!!" one person wrote.

Another speculated as to why Spectrum sent her a router chock full of roaches in the first place. "Spectrum refurbish is a lot of their equipment so they might have been eggs in the equipment while I was sitting in the warehouse," they wrote.

Someone else remarked they would've caused such a stink with the company that they would have finagled some free internet service out of it for years. "I’d have a credit until 2026," they joked.

Others urged Fleur to contact Spectrum to rectify the issue.

"As a former spectrum employer, you definitely should’ve taken this to the customer service desk and ask to be(potentially) credited," one user wrote.

"Contact corporate!! File a complaint through the BBB and FCC and raise hell. I used to handle corporate complaints for a similar company," another suggested.

Fleur shared the video on February 10, and it has since garnered nearly 340,000 views on TikTok. However, the TikToker has not yet shared a video update as to whether or not the issue was rectified.

In a comment response shared April 15, Fleur wrote that the customer service representatives were "unfazed" by her concerns.

The Daily Dot has reached out to Spectrum via email and Fleur via TikTok comment for further information.

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