Forum Discussion

maliciousman's avatar
maliciousman
New Contributor II
7 years ago

Issues with Gigablast and the HORRENDOUS "support" I have received from Cox.

I upgraded to GigaBlast on September 27th. What I have experienced since that time is nothing less than consumer neglect. It's absolutely absurd what I have to go through to get the service I'm paying for.

Series of events:

27 Sep. 2018-Upgrade to Gigablast. Monitor speeds over the next week with no significant change from the Ultimate 300MB speeds.

Since this time, I have had multiple engagements with the social media department, and cox online support. I have described my issues so many times I hear it in my sleep. I'm passed from technician to technician that wants me to start over my troubleshooting, and then assigns a new field technician to come check the equipment at my house. (Each time I'm promised a "Senior Field Technician" as a response to an ongoing issue wants such.

Field technician shows up at my house, doesn't know anything about GigaBlast, and calls their supervisor who tells them to open a maintenance ticket.

Three days go by, I reach out to FaceBook again. I'm told the ticket was resolved because the maintenance team said everything looks good and closed the ticket. But I still have terrible internet.

I get on the line with Arris (Manufacturer of Modem) and they open a ticket, identifying the signal COMING from Cox cable is not configuration correctly. I perform a full factory reset on my modem, and the in house wireless router.

So I communicate this with a tier 2 technician who identifies a misconfiguration on the part of Cox Cable, and dispatches a field technician.

The Field technician reschedules multiple times before showing up LATE on a day that I stressed needed to be gone by 6pm at night. He came another day, and replaced the modem in my house with one that he, and the online technician PROMISED me would fix my issue, and prove that my equipment is the cause of the problem. It didn't. All his signals were great, but the new PROMISED modem couldn't supply more than 300MB download speeds, even though the signals looked good. He left with no other answer than that he needs to open another maintenance ticket.

I go on tirade to FB and am dismissed after several attempts/demands for more technical assistance.

Nope...They opened the ticket and had another maintenance team come to my house. I see the maintenance guy drive up....plug in his meter for 10 minutes...unplugs it...and drives away. He says my signals are good...and closes the ticket. But my speeds are still no bueno.

I demanded from FB once again for investigation since I'm STILL NOT GETTING THE CORRECT SPEEDS. I have provided logs from my modem.. I have provided the ticket number with Arris. I have lost all my patience.  The FB agent dispatches another promised Senior SUPERVISOR  field technician.

Who shows up? A guy who has almost no experience with GigaBlast and has zero idea what to do to fix it. So I call and get in touch with another Tier 2 technician that identifies the issue as a misconfiguration on COX's part, and insists that the maintenance team should have identified it by now. The field technician in my house has to dispatch a maintenance request AGAIN.

I provide all of the details to the FB team once again, and I'm told to get bent for 72 hours, and have refused to even acknowledged they have received the information I'm communicating to them. And each time I reach a new technician in some other department, I have to start this entire dramatic unfolding over again. And then I'm sent to the back of the line again....with STILL NO CONSISTENT SPEEDS.

Cox has been making me jump through hoops and basically finger pointing back to me and my hardware/configurations. I have proven consistently that the configuration mismatch is on the part of COX and I have still had to fight this.

I am 100% certain there are people out there who gladly hand their checks over to COX and have the wrong configuration being provided BY COX. I have spent dozens of hours troubleshooting, reading blogs, communicating the problems to dozens of technicians, and I cannot get help. Actual help.

What makes this worse is that when I upgraded from 100MG to 300MB, I experienced a very similar situation. I spent three months fighting with Cox until one actual Cox technician came to my house, requested a change on a node, and drove away with my 300MB service fully functional.

I hope if you're reading this, that you're as persistent as I am with getting what you're paying for.

I will gladly answer anyone if they want more technical details of my experience to validate my story line.

***Obligatory qualifications*** I'm a senior technical consultant within datacenter virtualization, and storage backgrounds. I can communicate on moderately high level in configuration and design.

bad service
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  • Bruce's avatar
    Bruce
    Honored Contributor III
    7 years ago

    I'm curious about your monitoring.  What specifically is horrendous?

    How do you "monitor speeds"...speed tests or your modem page?

    In addition to your signal levels, what are the results of your tests?

    Are you using a wire or wireless connection to test?

    If wire, specific type of wire or adapter?

    If wireless, specific type of wireless card?

    • maliciousman's avatar
      maliciousman
      New Contributor II
      7 years ago

      Speedtest.net. Fast.com, etc. My speeds range between 7-350Mb down, and 30-50MB up. It varies throughout the day. Yes I'm testing directly wired to the modem. The router is a LInksys EA9500 with current firmware, and basic configurations. I have made all the appropriate settings on the router, and have ruled it out based on the experience of the technicians plugging in new modems, and getting the same results on their LAN speed tester.

  • Bruce's avatar
    Bruce
    Honored Contributor III
    7 years ago
    Cox technician came to my house, requested a change on a node, and drove away with my 300MB service fully functional.

    DOCSIS to neighborhood node...I wonder if the change is still in affect?

    • maliciousman's avatar
      maliciousman
      New Contributor II
      7 years ago

      The latest Tier 2 technician said there is a clear misconfiguration, and that the Maintenance team should recognize this: 

      transport methods 
      serviceable docsis 3.1 gig available 
      however active transport method shows hfc with active transport method description shows as coax (gig not available) 

      Apparently this is a configuration that is limiting the speeds to 350Mb or lower. One channel is set for 1Gb, and the other is throttled to 350Mb. (How the Tier 2 technician explained it.)

  • sheilako's avatar
    sheilako
    New Contributor II
    7 years ago

    You should write a weekly column to keep us updated.  This would actually be funny if you were not living it.  Keep up the good fight!

  • Mark_in_NWA's avatar
    Mark_in_NWA
    New Contributor
    7 years ago

    I’m about to downgrade back to 300...Gigablast has been nothing but a problem. Connection drops EVERY day sometimes 3 and 4 times a day, and slow downs are constant. 

    We didn’t have these issues with the 300 service and since we often work from home we’ll take consistency over super speed promises. I’m using my ipad’s data plan to reply now just to reply on this forum.

    I’ve replaced the Panoramic modem, invested in a $100 Rocketfish spike/data bar that has a coax in/out (at the suggestion of my Cox Solutions store advisor) and no difference.

    I’m calling to downgrade today.

    • Allan's avatar
      Allan
      Moderator
      7 years ago
      @Mark in NWA. We do not recommend running a coaxial line through a surge protector such as the Rocketfish. Please run the coaxial line directly to the modem and let us know if there is any change with the service. -Allan Cox Support Forums Moderator
  • Becky's avatar
    Becky
    Moderator
    7 years ago
    Hi Maliciousman, I'm sorry that the move to Gigablast has been such a headache! There's still an open maintenance request for your node. I'll keep an eye on this ticket and let you know when the maintenance team has investigated further. -Becky, Cox Support Forums Moderator
  • stylinex's avatar
    stylinex
    New Contributor II
    7 years ago

    Where do you live? Has COX changed the cables in your neighborhood? How old are the cables in your neighborhood? Some neighborhoods are still using basic TV cables that are 20-30 years old which are not meant to handle these high speed data transfers. With wrong cables you will not receive proper data speeds even if you have all the right stuff at your address but if the main line coming to your address from the outside is still using an outdated old line you will most likely still have issues. COX will tell you that they will send a technician out to diagnose issue then bill you for it when in fact the main issue could be from main line outside of your address. Old lines are not 100% fully compatible with today's internet speeds. They try to boost and amplify lines to work.

    • maliciousman's avatar
      maliciousman
      New Contributor II
      7 years ago

      I live in a new neighborhood, that is connected to a hub that is relatively new as well. After another visit with another technician telling me AGAIN that something is wrong with my modem. I challenged him to find two good working modems and plug them in to see what I get. He is supposed to come back today.

      But then my latest update was yesterday from Facebook Cox technician telling me that they're sorry, but Gigablast isn't allowed in my area at this time.

      Seems like a knee jerk reaction from a whole stem of people that have no idea what they're doing. What's the best answer? "Tell the customer we don't support it."

      The additional audacity to them putting me through all this, and accepting no responsibility, was when they told me they could only refund me for the days that my ticket was open about the issue.

      I signed up for Gigablast on September 27th, and opened the ticket about 10 days later. I waited that long to see if they could make some config changes, and allow it to catch up to me. The FB technician didn't want to provide me a refund for the amount of money I paid for something I didn't ever even get.

      I wish I had some good lawyer friends. What they've done to me, and undoubtedly boatloads more, is nothing short of consumer neglect. I would LOVE to do an audit of their systems to see how many people are paying for Ultimate, or Gigablast, and aren't even zoned for that service.