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FredRock's avatar
FredRock
New Contributor
3 years ago

Cox should change email posture and support users

I have an acute problem and a chronic one.  The acute problem is that for some reason the Cox outgoing email server doesn't like my ip address.  We recently upgraded from satellite internet service to fiber at my parent's home and the result was great speed but while I could receive my email in Outlook Cox wasn'allowing me to send.  Nothing changed on my phone or computer except the internet service provider.  If I go to the village and connect to my cell phone provider, emails wiill then send, but fail again when I return to my parent's home, where I often visit.  How can I get Cox to accept my outgoing mail on the SMTP server? 

The chronic problem, and I suspect the root cause of the acute one, is that Cox has turned their back on their most loyal customers and decimated their support for email.  They don't want to be in that business but would prefer to have others bear those costs.  But many of us long-time customers have a significant amount of time invested in these email accounts and don't want to switch.  Does Cox care?  I for one can assure them that if this acute problem isn't resolved and I have to bite the bullet and move to another email platform, I will be taking my entire account away from them--internet, phone and cable TV-- which is only a couple of hundred dollars a month but I'm sure the folks over at Full Channel / i3 Broadband would be happy to have my business.

  • coxlv5115's avatar
    coxlv5115
    New Contributor
    3 years ago

    Cox blocks outbound port 25 which is total BS. Comcast used to do this but there was a way to go in your account settings and turn it off. No such luck on Cox. Some of us run legitimate mail servers (not spam relays) for various purposes like home automation and its been a real pain in the you-know-what since they implemented this policy. 

    I now use a smart host to receive inbound mail and relay it home over an alternate port. Outbound mail goes out through the same smarthost on an alternate port. 

    If you're just relaying outbound on a personal mail account you can use the alternate SMTP ports (I think, 975) to send outbound provided your mail server has them open. I didn't have good luck using Cox's relay to go outbound (started thresholding camera events) and no, I don't need a commercial account, this has worked fine on every consumer ISP I've used since the 90's (no reason it shouldn't).