Reading that the card reader was fighting the printer for bandwidth actually made me wince. Twenty three devices on a box built for ten is wild, and you were just sitting there blaming Comcast while every single job crawled. I can't believe the first two techs didn't even look at the router before the third guy spotted it. Going from 40 minutes to 6 on uploads is a huge jump, and honestly it sounds like you got lucky nothing worse happened with all those payment transactions getting choked.

I read somewhere that the foil wrap basically stops the stall by trapping steam, so it's not really cheating, just speeding things up. Twice tested and you're a believer now, that's how it goes.

That $80 kit probably came with a nice box though, and that's what you're really paying for. My own dumb purchase was a $60 "competition" rib rack that just held my ribs up like little soldiers while they dried out. Turns out a plain old cookie sheet did the same job for free, so now it lives in the garage with the other bad ideas.