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labreaavenue's avatar
labreaavenue
New Contributor
7 years ago

Anemic download speeds, sudden price increase -- what am I paying for?

I've been a Cox Essential Internet customer in Las Vegas since October of 2016. For about the past four months, my download speeds have been *anemic* -- I'm talking sub-1 MB per second on wireless and just a hair over 2 MB when plugged directly into my router. I can't purchase and download a new computer game unless I'm really itching to put everything computer-related on hold for ten hours while I wait for it to finish just so I can get two hours of play time in before bed. I can't stream content on my television (again, plugged directly into the router) for more than about five minutes before hideous buffering issues kick in.

There's also insane connectivity issues I have to contend with on a daily basis; despite all the ads I see on my television about your sparkling, brand-spanking-new "panoramic wifi" and how I'll apparently be able to pull off jaw-dropping acrobatic stunts while remaining connected to my wifi, I find myself switching to mobile data on my phone when I'm more than ten feet away from my router.

To top it all off, I discovered today that I'm now being charged $73 for "Essential Internet" after paying just over $46 a month for as long as I can remember. Cooked into that charge, evidently, is a "modem rental fee" that you swore up and down you'd refund to me after a year's worth of successful payments when you mandated that I pay one because you couldn't verify my identity thanks to the apostrophe in my last name and said I didn't qualify for a free modem.

I guess my real question amidst this entire rant is, what am I paying for? Not trying to be rude or sarcastic, but I genuinely don't understand why I'm now paying over $70 a month for wireless Internet that can't reliably extend more than ten feet and wired Internet that can't download a twenty gigabyte game in under seven hours. Again, not trying to be rude, but for all the horror stories I've heard about DSL and satellite Internet I can't imagine they'd be much worse than what I've experienced so far this year.

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  • DannyS's avatar
    DannyS
    Moderator
    7 years ago
    Hello labreaavenue, The purpose of the Cox Internet Forum is to allow customers to discuss technical topics related to residential Cox Cable, Telephone and High Speed Internet services with other customers. This appears as if you may need for someone to look into your account personally. We can definitely be able to assist you with this. Please reach us on Twitter at @CoxHelp, visit us on Facebook, or email by at cox.help@cox.com. Provide us the name on the account with the full service address with a link to this thread so we can get started.
  • AZDesertGal's avatar
    AZDesertGal
    New Contributor
    7 years ago

    Also have very slow internet speed.  testmy.net  is the only true checker for speed as if you use cox or one they recommend like speedtest.net you will only see what Cox wants you to see.

    I subscribe to 30MBPS and on this computer (which is not the fastest) I get 141Kbps to 155 Kbps. Quite a difference.  They have tried everything including rewiring my cables, but nothing works.  It just always gets worse. But, how much worse than 141 Kbps??

    The loaned me the Panoramic modem/router and said it would be $10 a month if I want to keep it. Now I know I am not crazy enough to spend $120 a year when I can just buy a new router for probably even less.

    Talk to someone in their customer retention and tell them you are going to go with a different internet company.  They will quickly reduce your bill.  I did this and they increased my speed from 15Mbps to 30 Mbps and reduced my bill by $10 so now my internet is around $50 Plus all the taxes, etc.  But I don't think I should be paying even that amount for the internet that I cannot always use due to this speed.