Accurate Status Updates

While it appears COX is trying to provide customers like myself with updates of service outages, but I had yet another bad experience this morning.

I am a COX Gigablast customer.

At 2:30AM, my Internet went down.  I called (623) 594-1000 and after I confirmed my phone number and PIN, I heard a message that there was an outage in my area and that they estimated service would be restored by 6AM.

At 6AM, service was not restored so I called COX again for an update.  This time, I reached a Level 1 CSR.  She promptly transfered me to a Level 2 CSR.  I explained the situation and asked for a service outage update.  He said there were no outages in my area and then proceeded to ask me to go through the typical troubleshooting process; are the lights on, which lights are on, power off the fiber box, power off the router, what lights are on the router, etc.  None of this mattered, I still was not getting connected to the Internet.  I asked him one last time, can you see my fiber box, he said yes, everything appears good.  I told him I will troubleshoot my own network and hung up.

But the Internet was not available.  I called back and reached another CSR, shout out to John, who told me there was an extended outage in my area; estimated now to be restored by 11AM.

Dealing with Cox CSRs has never been a consistently pleasant experience.  It's hit or miss. 

It wasn't until I got to work was I able to see online that there was an extended outage.  COX offered me the option of getting a test when service is restored.  That's nice.

I wonder if this service is available for proactive notification of scheduled (planned) outages as well.