Tag: Cox Communications

Wherein Cox finally admits, they’re doing ‘work’

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So I’ve been having repeated net connectivity issues – mostly now it’s between 10:00PM and Midnight.

So every time it happens, I take the log snippet off my firewall and send it off to the good folks at Cox Communications.

So after sending the latest batch and saying I’m getting tired of this I get the following response. If you’re not familiar FEC is Forward Error Correction. DOCSIS is and I kid you not is Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification.  So in essence they’ve been doing system work which in my book says upgrades, patches etc. during the time period I indicated. It took at least a half dozen phone calls, 20+ emails to get them to admit that. Jesus Christ on a Stick!

 

Hello,

We have been performing work lately on the docsis side of the house ECR000000397606.  Not sure at this time if it relates to what you are experiencing as the only thing seen on the modem at this time are some FEC issues.  If you would like to schedule an appointment for a tech to come out for testing please advise, and we can provide you some timeframes we have available.  If you would like to hold off til after this work is done to see if this improves without a tech that is fine as well.  You can contact us in a day or two and ask for the update on that ticket.  Just let us know.

Remember this one?

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Back in 2012 I had thought about getting rid of Cable Television service. A few hundred channels and nothing to watch.

Well I finally did it a few months ago. I returned the cable box to Cox. Why you ask? Because the television after I’d repaired it lasted three years and once again is broken. And I’m no longer able to find the power supply for it and don’t have the time to replace the capacitors on the board.

And I’m loathe to buy another television.Beside the point my viewing has moved to the laptop screen and the only reason I’d buy a TV is to sling HDMI to it from the laptop. So that’s why I haven’t repaired or replaced the TV.

It’s been so nice not to have a $200 cable bill every month. And since I posted in 2012 I signed up for the Amazon Prime account, haven’t yet subscribed to Hulu. And no need for the Roku box since there’s no TV to hook it up to.

Sayonara Cox Cable Modem Rental Fees

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So in my quest to lower my Cox Communications bill I purchased a new Cable Modem for all of $60 bucks. To rent the Cisco would cost me $84+ per year. So I’m ahead of the game.

And when they swapped me over – I owned the Surfboard modem we had in here. And they took that. So Cox is trying to pull a fast one. Fucking assholes.

Cut the cord at last

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So I turned in my cable box today. They’ve been screwing me as a customer for two years regards the video and phone service. So I just dropped the box back off today. And I wasn’t the only one – in a line of about 10 people 7 were returning cable boxes.

The future for Cox Communications looks pretty dim. I’ll keep them for net services but they can pucker up and kiss my ass over $200 a month. I’ve had it.

And I’ve already ordered a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem. Then I can have the pleasure of returning their Cisco cable modem to them and telling them to stuff the rental fee.

 

Yet another reason to hate Cox Communications

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Here I am, paying through the nose for phone, net and TV with HBO. So a cox mailer comes in and it says “Pay only $79.99 or more.” But here’s the kicker – I’m paying $15 a month for HBO (I checked an old bill from 7 years ago, it was $5 then!). But the package they are offering to new customers – INCLUDES free HBO for two years. Ut si!

And I found out something else – cox outbound SMTP – if you send a certain volume of email – it blocks port 25 for three hours. So no bulk mailing. Well you can, but you can get about 1,500 emails out in about an hours time, then you get shut off for three hours. So it now effectively takes 4 hours to do 1,500 emails – or if we extrapolate because I know we’re queuing up a little over 20,000 emails. 

But fortunately to the rescue – Bluehost has SSL secured tunnels to their SMTP side. Glory be!

It’s funny – I was asked what would it take to get Cox to allow bulk email for a political campaign? I’ll tell you, pay a few hundred a month for their business class service. And where the campaign is located there is NO choice – it’s Cox or nothing.

 

But like I said, we figured end run around that one.

It’s funny – but Cox has a devil may care attitude about it’s long time customers. Part of it is because they KNOW you’re locked in. In my case I’ve got a total of two choices – Cox or Verizon. And in my case I have a burning hatred of Verizon to begin with. But Cox doesn’t offer any customer loyalty bonus, nothing. They’ve been overcharging me for years. I think they owe me a little bit back.

Cox will forever be the underdog

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I say this because I’ve been a Cox Communications customer for many years. And my experience with Verizon was far less than stellar for both residential and commercial services.

But I have to laugh every time Cox tries to say they’re improving my TV service. The latest is this:
ImageNotice anything? Yeah – only available for IOS.  No Android app. Really Cox? I mean just based on my blog stats and pro site stats I don’t get a whole lot of IOS visits, but I do get a lot of Android visitors. And I’ve talked to friends that blog and have personal web sites and they concur – it’s mostly a Windows and Android world out there.

But Cox Communications – the perpetual underdog ignores that a pretty good majority of their customers who are using Android devices and writes the $*#(*@# IOS app instead. Nice going assholes.

Things that cross in the mail

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I had neglected to pay my Cox bill last month. But this week I went on the web site and paid the bill. Today I get a notice in the mail that says I owed them but the date tells me this was generated prior to my making the payment online.

But the notice had other interesting information. I’m paying $146 a month for cable, net and phone.

The notice actually broke it down:

Each month I pay:
$93.02 For Advanced TV

$23.47 For Net Service (50mpbs)

$30.42 for Phone Service

First off the net service. Prior to getting the full raft I had only net service and was paying $60 a month for that. So tell me, how does it drop to roughly 1/3 the cost for the same service?

The phone – $30.42 a month for a plain old telephone line with no voicemail is a bit on the pricey side.

But the video – $93.02 per month – are they fucking kidding me? Can you guess which services are going to get kicked to the curb sooner than later?

TV: Something I noticed

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So I had thought I might drop the Cox video service some time ago. But what kept me from doing so was that Keyron likes it for background noise.

But I noticed something the past few days. The TV has remained OFF. Net video has finally replaced the television.

If this continues on I may well tell Cox to shove their so called Advanced TV service at $90 per month straight up Hershey Highway!

I’ll pay the $60 a month for the net service because to me that has more utility than a television service. I can for example, post to my blog, chat on IRC, get nntp news feeds, RSS feeds, YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, etc. It’s funny – I was lamenting that Netflix only had The Twilight Zone when my favorite was the Outer Limits, the 1960’s version. And I note Hulu has the whole series, both the 1960’s and 1990’s versions.

Woops, update. The TV just got turned on damn it.

More on Cox TV Service

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Well, I have been watching the stats on my post about ditching them. And I note that based on the number of hits I’m getting per day, we could if we all told Cox to fuck off on video services, cost them close to $10 Million a year.

So do it! Ditch them! Go with Roku, Amazon Video, Hulu+ and Netflix. It’s cheaper in the long run, less than 1/3rd the cost of Cox.

Lets hit them where it counts – in the pocketbook. And thanks for reading!

Something I noted

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That my post about Cox and their ever rising video prices is being hit by A LOT of Cox subscribers.

Good – I hope I starve Cox of some revenue. Maybe then they’ll get the hint.

Put it this way, 49 hits for that post yesterday. Overall that post has been hit 350 which represents a revenue drop of about $28,000 dollars a month, or $336,000 a year.

And I’m pretty sure the post is starting to resonate. Good, Cox should know better than to piss off bloggers.

Seriously – they’ve made some pretty ludicrous claims that power costs have gone up, etc. But I pay for electricity too and overall the rate has stayed the same for years now.

Sure, the carriage charges get ridiculous but I shouldn’t have to pay or Cox’s poorly managed video service choices. For example, I could give two shits about all the sports channels in the lineup. But I get them anyhow because you cannot avoid it.

But that will change soon. I ordered the Roku device.