Thanks !!!
I heard back from cox and at least they admit that they have a problem (no word on a fix). I have the email sent to 2 different addresses. One at work, which picks up new mail every few seconds, and one to my gmail account (i used have it sent to my cox account, until outlook would no longer connect to the cox account, and I missed a ton of messages. They sold me on their tech service (for a fee), and their advice was wait a day and it might fix itself. Duh, I could have told myself that for free. I canceled the tech service, and know what, in about a week, it automatically recovered (I think I needed to reboot). Since them, gmail is my primary home email.
The worst delay I have seen is over 24 hours. About a quarter are delivered in less than a minute, but the rest are usually about 6 or more hours delayed. Sounds volume related, but I doubt they will cop to that.