ISP drops, No downstream, No Internet…. why, oh why dear COX do you lie?
How are we supposed to trust you when…
- Multiple Cox Representatives, over the phone and via chat, fail to complete account verification
- Chat support does not understand the issue as described
- Technical support apparently doesn’t know to use their tools and resources
- Technical support misdiagnoses the issue, blames the customer, and doesn’t know to look for outages
- COX outage information is not accurately reported and does not reflect on outage website
- Smart Help self-service troubleshooting also does not report outage information, including from inner notes
- Representatives do not know how to check inner notes
- Technical support only solutions are 1) Reboot, the problem is on the customer end 2) Replace the modem 3) Charge extra for in person Technician 4) Charge extra to speak with Advanced Technical Support
- Technical Support Supervisors argue with the customer in a way that implies the customer is a liar, even with issue being on Cox end
- Retention department solution conflicts with everyone else, including Technical Support Supervisors
ISSUE DETAILS:
Home ISP went down around 7pm PST last night, in middle of remote work shift. Spent about 6 hours troubleshooting. Couldn’t wait for tech to come last night so purchased new modem. New modem had SAME issue, with no downstream or ISP connection. Reverted setup back to OG and went to bed. Woke up today and everything magically worked. Home network logs show ISP WAN service resumed around 3:30am PST today.
Technical support kept saying the issue was with my router and my modem was old (they are still selling same model on shelves btw, it's great! TY Netgear!), even when I had NO router connected, was NOT using Wi-Fi, and was directly ethernet modem connection. All cable connections, including splitter in attic, are solid with no lose or bad anything. No amount of rebooting, restarting, or resetting would fix. Logs indicated packet loss on ISP end and issue was with 2 separate modems (1 was brand new). Oddly during this, both modems did initially connect for 5-10 mins after 1st reboot and then stopped working. Multiple agents wanted to charge me for having a technician come to home or charge to speak with “advanced support”.
Called today to find out what the issue was, what changed, or what triggered the solution so could prevent a next time. Tech agent didn’t understand issue and wanted to troubleshoot an issue I wasn’t having any longer, which was nonsensical. The agent also wanted to charge me for advanced support or to send technician out, which again was nonsensical when I was no longer having an issue. The agent’s supervisor did not listen to issue and kept saying it was an issue with my router or modem.
I spoke with retention, who advised me there WAS an outage last night that ended this morning. Those outage details were apparently missed by every other chat and over the phone agents? Really, really ODD. Makes me wonder if retention was blowing smoke or if their Technical Support and Chat groups are really that inadequate. From my experiences, I sadly believe the latter. Work also checks on outages and saw nada. Can’t prove to employer that COX had another outage! At least retention did help with future tech support needs with the Cox Cares support thingy. I appreciate COX not charging me for doing their jobs and supporting their own services...mostly.
EFFORTS LOSS: ½ work shift, 6 hours total time last night, 2 hours today, and $300-ish on new modem which needs returning.
EFFORTS GAIN: Learned most folks don’t need to pay for the unlimited plans if you keep your data under 1280 gigs a month. Check your data use history and save yourself $50 bucks a month off plan bloat!
RESULT: 12/2-12/3 ISP drops – it was them not us!
PS. Make sure if you talk to anyone at COX they verify your account. Lots of agents like to skip that step, give account info out, and make changes without it.
