POP3 e-mail not working!

            I am in San Diego. Thursday afternoon (December 10), I started experiencing the inability to access my e-mail via POP3 (using Thunderbird), receiving the message "Sending of password for user ***** did not succeed. Mail server pop.cox.net responded: invalid user name or password" even though the username and password were correct. I have experienced that continuously through now (Monday afternoon, December 14). I have been able to access e-mail via the Web mail interface (using the same username and password). I have called Cox technical support at least four times over the past few days. Each time I was told that you were experiencing significant problems with your e-mail servers, including Web mail outages. The service personnel said they had been receiving many, many phone calls about this. I finally asked to be connected to tier 2 support. The person there said there were no problems with e-mail, and that the other tech support people were mistaken!

I have made no changes in hardware, software, or software settings, and have been using this method of accessing e-mail for years. I have experienced this problem with Cox from time to time in the past, but it has usually lasted only an hour or so. I've checked all my settings: they are correct. I've reset my modem, and done all of the other usual steps to troubleshoot problems with Thunderbird. I've reset my password. I do not have Thunderbird storing the password: I reenter it each time. This isn't a Thunderbird problem. It is a Cox problem.

I would greatly appreciate it if Cox would please get this fixed! It takes me more than twice as long to process my e-mail using the Web interface as it does using Thunderbird, and this has totally disrupted my workflow. I'm volunteer Editor of an international scientific publication, and this has caused havoc with that publication. One of the tech support people said that Cox did do a software update to its e-mail servers on Thursday. I suspect that something changed in the POP3 configuration. The fact that you don't support Thunderbird isn't an issue: you do support POP3 (indeed, that's the main reason I purchase Internet services from you), and right now, your POP3 server isn't accepting valid login requests. Please help!