What’s up with Cox Cable?!?

At first I thought it was our router. It was a bit old, so I got a new one. It had good reviews, so I was confident that would solve the problem. It didn’t.

I checked the cable modem and the logs showed repeated errors, so I call Cox tech support—an aggravating ordeal.

I hate talking to machines. It’s demeaning and I refuse to do it, except Cox had designed their system to force you to. I finally figured out that if I kept pressing “0” enough I’d get a human. It works after several minutes. They really, really want you to embarrass yourself talking to a machine. I guess they think that’s funny or something.

Well, they said I’d have to get a new modem since my current one was so old. I checked prices and decided I’d rather put up with the connection outages than pay to replace the modem, at least for now. Then their robot called and said I was eligible for a free modem.

Time for another bout of being the butt of Cox Cable sick sense of humor. I called to ask about it, got transferred three times and the person finally said that if I got a free one I had to pay a $15 installation fee, but if I bought one it was only $10 and they waived the installation fee. (They must have been rolling around on the floor over that one). I agreed to pay the $10 and got a really cheap looking modem in the mail a few days later, which I had to install myself. I connected it but it had to “verify” my connection first. It never would. I called tech support and they had me run through their usual hoops several times before they flipped the switch on their end that makes it work.

My internet connection is exactly the same; dropping every five minutes or so for about a minute, then coming back.

A friend on Facebook posted that she was having problems with her internet. She lives in another state, and uses Cox Cable. At least a dozen of her friends commented that they too were using Cox Cable and having problems, all from various locations. I posted asking the rest of my friends if any of them were having problems with Cox Cable and got the same kind of responses (for those who still used CC).

Yesterday afternoon the internet went down and wouldn’t come back up. I call CC tech support and they ran me through their hoops, except I stopped short of rebooting any computers. I told them it was obvious the problem was at their end and I wasn’t accepting the conclusion that it was my equipment. The internet finally came back on after I threatened to switch to DSL.

I tried switching the DNS on my router to OpenDNS, and that seemed to make things go smoother last might, but this morning it’s back to the usual.

I did find out that Cox is able to tell what router (if any) you are using, and they not only sell routers, but they sell “networking” packages, so one guess is that they are intentionally screwing with people who use routers in order to con them in to buying a router from them or buy their “networking” package. Hopefully some enterprising lawyer will jump on that and get a nice class action suit going.

Meanwhile, my internet is spotty and I make my living using the internet. And lately it’s not been much of a living since clients (who will actually pay) are getting more and more scarce.

Cox Cable’s a humongous corporation and they seem to have the business model of squeezing people already hurt by the bad economy. Since DSL has earned such a bad name (except for AT&T’s new Uverse, which isn’t available in this area) Cox has more or less a monopoly. That’s a bad thing.

Posted by Danny Carlton at July 2, 2009 8:55 AM