Firstly I would not call the excessively limited info that you posted a case study, or anything close to it.
Next did you actually check to see that any of those comments stuck as links found or are you just going off of the successful posted in scrapebox? This is why its not a case study, you have failed to provide even the most rudimentary info such as this.
Next did you check to see if any of those links were indexed? If they went to moderation it can take weeks to get them approved and more time still to get them indexed. If they were auto approve and they did stick and you know this cause you link checked them all, then are they indexed? If they aren't indexed its not possible to compare results.
Next how many unique domains were there? If there were 100K urls on 1 site you blasted its not going to work as good as if there were 10K unique domains. How about the PR of the actual pages you posted links on, is it a nice mix or all low or no pr?
Posting comments is only 1 small aspect of both what scrapebox can do and SEO in general. Did you do any RSS submission? How about rapid indexer links? Did you filter the rapid indexer by true links found and high PR? Did you use the rapid indexer to get into exit pages and dynamic pages that you created seperate content for?
How about did you post some trackbacks? Did you master getting links approved on moderated blogs so there is nice PR, trust and low OBL?
Not to mention tracking your competition. If you didn't track the first 50-100 results in google before you test, how do you know that 10 of your competitors who were below you did 10 times the link building you did and that you site didn't move up 9 spots just to have the 10 competitors all jump in front of you which pushed you back 1 spot.
Furthermore 1 week in general is such a short time you can't even begin to effectively track the value of your work. Track it on a 1-3 month period. Next you should consider that scrapebox alone isn't the only tool you need to effectively make you site rank well, its a very powerful one that you should not be without, but not exclusive.
Besides that you could have used the TDNAM addon to scrape a list of for sale sites around your keywords, use the pr checker to check pr, use the fake pr addon to verify, do your research and buy some cheap high PR domains and then put content on them and build links to your site. Thus you control high PR sites that link on the home page to your site.
Or maybe you could master the new learning mode poster to find some untapped platforms that other people aren't spamming and post to them, get some nice links on some trusted sites.
Its not about what scrapebox can do, its about how you use it to do things that "outside of the box" of what every one else is doing, in conjuction with also doing what everyone else is doing.
So in short, if I may be blunt, yes scrapebox is VERY effective for SEO, but perhaps the item on the list that is not effective at SEO is your methods and you need to learn and change.
Given that your tests vary based on your network and they are the same in safe mode, it would seem to point to something outside your PC, but in your network/ISP. The red auth test at the cafe could have been their filtering, as most companies that offer public wifi employ some kind of filtering.
Were you able to test proxies on the cafe connection? How about post or anything else? What about posting comments on the cafe connection if you uncheck use proxies?
Did you log into your router and or modem and see if there are any rules that have been created for scrapebox? How about allowing it. I know on my router I have a firewall section and it has dynamic rules it creates for programs and ports it allows and such. Try turning the firewall in the router off too. Also restart your router/modem.
Does googling forums show that your ISP has any kind of filtering history or blocks stuff for people?
What if you turn the connections on proxy testing down to 1, that way its not so aggressive, perhaps whatever is toying with it would like that.
Twitter does this now and they are quite good at it. Sure if you only login 3 times per day they might see you as a ok, but people would want to make 10,000 comments per day. I mean I would, why wouldn't you login 12,000 times a day? I can hit 1,000,000+ blogs per day commenting per server and I have multiple servers.
Well most companies are going to charge you an arm and a leg for software, or a monthly subscription or for tech support. Its not that scrapebox has a problem, it works for thousands of users, its clearly your pc/network that has the problem and its not their responsibility to fix it.
Furthermore they are providing you free support, without a monthly subscription, and a tool at a fraction of a cost of what its worth. I build more links and gain better rankings with scrapebox then I do with Xrumer and I paid $600 for Xrumer and pay $10 a month and if you want support, well you won't get a response faster then 1 time per day, its unecesarily complex and old school, and they frankly will give you enough help that if you greatly help yourself you can get things solved, but don't expect even close to the level of help you get from scrapebox support. The monthly fee on XRumer alone is twice in a year what scrapebox costs not to mention the fact that the initial cost is 10 times what scrapebox costs. So you saved about $650 so far off what you should be paying for scrapebox, you could pay a local computer person less then that to solve you problem I am sure.
Not flaming you, but you have to compare apples to apples. Its your problem, the better attitude would be that of thankfulness for an amazing deal and quality free support to boot. Just sayin...