Contributor II
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421 Messages
Email down
There seems to be no email service for Connecticut. Is this yet another scheduled maintenance outage that Cox doesn't bother giving its paying customers the consideration of a heads up or is there a problem? I ask that in particular because on several occasions I have discovered my services down for what turns out to be routine work or maintenance.... this includes phone services... THANKFULLY I didn't have an emergency where I needed to contact work or my family.
I have inquired about this and the consensus I seem to get is that Cox COMMUNICATIONS... a company whose services include email servers and telephone and who has no problems targeting its customer base for telemarketing calls does not in its infinite wisdom see fit to give any sort of heads up on planned outages- including automated "robocalls".... but I suppose this level of contempt is to be expected when there are so few players in this particular business niche and so little actual competition for customer dollars with no downward pressure on price or motivation to render anything but lip service to the concept of customer service.
So is this another "need to know" situation where the customer (who is always paying) does not need to know?
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FloridaUser
New Contributor
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1 Message
Also down in Florida. Curious time for scheduled maintenance, if that's the root cause.
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stinkfoot63
Contributor II
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421 Messages
A year or so ago (I forget the precise date) there was a sizable (areal coverage) email outage that lasted an entire weekend for which there were no refunds issued on the premise that email is a free service because it does not appear as a specific item on a customer's bill. Both of my emails received the exact same "sincere" apology email from Cox. No money back though.
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wez
New Contributor
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7 Messages
Mine is down in Coventry, RI for past 2 1/2 hours or more.
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WillHarrisInVA
New Contributor II
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13 Messages
Down in Virginia, too. Sigh...
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Trikein
Contributor III
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806 Messages
I can get into webmail and sent a test email to myself and checked it via POP and IMAP. State: RI
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Steve3141
New Contributor
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22 Messages
down in Kansas
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rnelson
New Contributor
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1 Message
Just spoke with someone here in Virginia and was told it's been out since around 9:30pm. Of course they don't know when it will be restored. Could be up to 24 hours -- and folks, she said it affected 100's of thousands.
And yes, the only way to find this is by calling them. Guess they don't want us to know. Years ago they listed planned and actual outages on their website. Now they'd rather have us call... or give up waiting.
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Frank
New Contributor
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52 Messages
Email is down in Georgia also.
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downtherabbitho
New Contributor III
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20 Messages
Email down here in Kansas too at 11:38 pm CST. Who knows for how long? Am seriously thinking about switching all my critical email to a different carrier; this isn't the first time email has gone down with no apparent notice to us.
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mellonman
New Contributor
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1 Message
I spoke to support and they confirmed they have servers that are down.
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stinkfoot63
Contributor II
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421 Messages
I guess that if it's a case of an outage there's no reasonable way to notify... the servers seem to be partially up- I can access my inbox through web mail but cannot view any of my sub-folders nor can I use Thunderbird to download or read messages.
One of my major peeves with Cox is their refusal to communicate with customers in regard to necessary service down times related to equipment maintenance and upgrades. Twice within the past month I've gotten up and booted up my computer only to find the modem on perpetual boot and picking up my phone to confirm that the line is dead. I had spoken with representative about that some months ago after a cluster of such outages and was told that communicating such things is unfeasible. Frankly I see it as reflecting a corporate attitude of contempt toward the paying customer who is by and large seen as captive- with little or not alternative.
I do try to be mindful of the fact that the human on the other end is simply holding down an honest job to pay bills when I call in- like the moderators who chime in these forums they are not the source of the policies but are left to deal with angry and frustrated customers who are hamstrung by them. They are working for a company whose track record gives rise to these types of speculative discussions when services are interrupted and there's likely a little more to deal with than necessary when they are forced to do little more than erect a friendly facade over a philosophy that effectively deals out "tough titty, we have your money" when things don't go as planned on their end.
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patricia1791
New Contributor
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5 Messages
E-mail appears to be working in northeast Kansas. (at least, for now!) :)
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patricia1791
New Contributor
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5 Messages
stinkfoot63, you wrote that there is no reasonable way to notify customers of outages. Cox could post a notice at their website. And they could post it on their Facebook page as well.
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stinkfoot63
Contributor II
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421 Messages
My webmail seems to have been partially corrupted because when I attempt to view the contents of one of the folders I created I keep getting a "500 Servlet Exception" error followed by what appears to be a huge page of code that starts with the line:
"javax.servlet.ServletException: too many servlet includes `/do/mail/folder/view'"
. This could be an account specific issue which seems likely to result in this discussion's closure.
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stinkfoot63
Contributor II
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421 Messages
No reasonable way of notifying ahead of time when there is a surprise technical glitch but your point is well taken that they COULD inform us about issues in progress so we don't burden their technicians- but the corporate decision makers would have to value customer concerns in order to do so- and until there's viable competition we aren't going to see that- only rate increases and tough to verify claims of increased speed.
It's likely another case of it being on a "need to know" basis- and as lowly customers we don't need to know... unless we bother to call as "mellonman" did.
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