I'm beginning to understand why these guys call themselves "Cox".
Their service is absolutely horrific. I've had problems since day one, and since then I've spent most of my waking hours talking to teenagers who tell me how to reset a modem. I know how to reset a modem, sweetie. I'm an expert at modem resetting. I've done it a hundred times in the last few weeks.
But it doesn't matter. Service is up, service is down. Service is fast, service is slow. I'm starting to mumble "server not found" in my sleep.
Not to worry. I'm on a special maintenance plan: they come out to my house and poke around in my attic for free. After which my Internet works for hours upon hours. Days if I'm lucky. Then... server not found. No connection. Go read a book, pal.
I won't even subject you to the tribulations endured during the initial setup process: I will only say it was the stuff of nightmares. If Freddy Krueger had driven up in a Cox van and started swiping at me with his razor-sharp finger blades, I would not have been particularly surprised. The organizational skills of this company will one day be the legendary. Like that really big ship... what was it called again?
No, the real problem is that once I endured the hell of witnessing Cox's Scooby Doo tail-chasing setup procedure unfold...or perhaps the right word is unravel... once I'd crossed the finish line of that particularly grueling uphill marathon... just when I thought it was over...I was hit with the realization that it had only just begun.
All that patience, all that repetition--I know my account number by heart--all that incomprehensible, mind-numbing back-and-forthing, and my reward was... wait for it...remarkably crappy Internet service.
It was all a bit anticlimactic.
The employees? They're okay. Except for that smug yet ineffectual kid Michael up on State Street, the customer service people are nice enough. True, they're slightly overwrought., and they all have that wild-eyed hyena-facing-a-lion look about them, but it's not their fault. I mean, after all, they work for Cox. If your bosses were Cox, you'd give off that same smell. Fear. Dread. Newspaper ink.
But they should put the want ads away: there's a recession on. There are no real companies hiring right now, so they have to stick it out. They have to work for this huge, mindless juggernaut of a company, these money-grubbng Cox who oversell an area to the point that during peak hours, all their paying customers get to stand shoulder to shoulder on the on-ramp of the information superhighway, like bunch of backward country rubes sitting in their stake bed pickups, watching the high-falutin' city folk speed by in their fancy convertibles. Wondering what it must be like to get on the Internet any time you want to.
If this continues, I'm going to invite the techs over for Christmas. They're beginning to feel like family.
Update, October 2011: Cox finally sent out someone competent: a guy named James, from a different company called CCT, which apparently does contract work for Cox when things get scary and confusing. Thanks to James and a shiny new SNR filter, my Internet nearly always works these days. I'm not sure if I should be happy or irritated about the fact that it only took James about four minutes to fix all my woes.
Update, November 2011: you're not going to believe this. Back during my "initial setup process" tribulations, one of the problems was that they entered my address into their computer incorrectly. Instead of the full four numbers, they entered only two. The address they entered was for a house that didn't even exist. Well, when they fixed the problem and entered the correct address, they never canceled the account under the incorrect address, which was still in my name...
...and under my social security number. You know what's coming next.
I looked on my credit report a few weeks ago and found a COLLECTION ACCOUNT from Cox... even though my Cox account is current. These brilliant lads had SUBMITTED ME TO COLLECTIONS to collect a balance for an account they'd never installed in a house that doesn't exist. I swear to Zeus, I'm not making this up. Just when I thought their service couldn't get any worse.
Am I on a sitcom here? Where's the camera? read more