COX Rated WORST - No surprise there.
Consumer Reports released the results of their survey of telecommunication services. No surprise that COX is in the WORST category no matter whether you look at the "Phne TV Internet Bundles", "Internet Providers", "TV Services" categories. In the "Value" category COX is always the lowest score, and in "Customer Service", the second lowest score possible. Where "reliability" was a rating factor, COX scored the median or "average" value. Same with "speed".
Why can a company with record (and increasing) profits sustain such growth with mediocre to poor services? UNREGULATED GOVERNMENT GRANTED MONOPOLIES! As in CA where COX hip-pocket politicians in the state legislature approved a carve up of the state into monopoly zones for telecom services among COX, COMCAST and XFINITY. This allowed COX for the longest time to keep its hip-pocket county commisioners from issuing construction permits to Verizon (local landline phone provider) to update their copper line to fiber which caused Verizon to abandon their services in my area to Frontier, a Chinese company that, because of Chinese law, has to make all communications on its networks available to Chinese military and industrial "intelligence" services without any type of legal review or check and balance. Why the Chinese interest in this area? It is fairly dense with high-tech companies with leading edge tech in medical, aerospace, military and civilian telecom, power generation and distribution technologies, the very areas Chinese spying has been penetrating and stealing for decades.
FINALLY (probably due to anti-American Trumpists in the telecom regulating agencies from Fed to state level) Frontier was able to break the COX stranglehold on the permitting process and has just started to upgrade the local copper network to fiber, and in limited neighborhoods, offer high-speed internet via fiber. COX current response in an advertising campaign specifically calling out Frontier on speed based on their historical DSL service in order to be sure no one notices that they are transitioning to Fiber. In addition COX falsely claims a 99%+ up-time/reliability that I have not experienced EVER in Cox internet service, and in their TV service since the early 2000's.
To bleed as much money out of existing customers before they discover there may be a more reliable and cost-effective option, COX has increased its customer abuse tactics. For example, charging for streaming services that are only available with a DVR-enable Cox receiver, while they KNOW you are only provisioned with (and charged for) non-DVR capable receiver (and stating when, called on the fact that their Web site says YOUR receiver IS capable of receiving the streaming service - i.e. HBOMax - that you need to upgrade to the DVR capable box at an addition $10 - 15 per month in order to use the service you are being billed for!). Another example: Initially signed up for the lowest internet speed package (at the time 100 mbps) when Verizon disabled my DSL by wiring in a new office complex between my home office and the switch so that the wire run to my house put me outside the DSL capable distance for their copper network. Subsequently I got (and saved) emails from COX telling me how I was getting a "free speed upgrade" to my existing internet service. Of course, these never appeared - at least not according to Ookla Speed Test. What did appear over time was a doubling then tripling of the "Ping" time over my DSL service which I believe is COX's interception of internet/website requests for purposes of privacy violating profiling and corporate throttling "for fun and profit" from data miners and corporations that want "priority" access to COX users. Then to rub salt into thw wounds, COX eliminated the 100 and 150 Mbps tiers, automatically "upgraded" those users to 250 mbps with an overall 40%+ fee increase, BUT NEVER UPGRADED THE ACTUAL SPEED OF THE CONNECTION!!!
When contacted, they tried to tell my wife (take advantage of an ignorant woman, they thought - except she shares the same software engineering creds as I have) that in order to get these new speeds we would have to upgrade our equipment to COX "panoramic" (mesh) WiFi, which is total BS especially for a home with one computer wired to the router, and one light-use tablet connected to the internet VERY SPORADICALLY throughout any given day. (No social media accounts, little to no looking at videos, mostly email, some shopping, and some info research for non-digital hobbies.) When challenged, the excuse became, "well your modem is too old - you need to upgrade it". I've been using my own Netgear DOCSIS 3.0 modem since the beginning with COX, and the only problem is their frequent outages that sometimes the own up to as "maintenance" and other times as "outage in your area" always with the same predicted fix time of 6:00 am the next day.
Despite knowing this was total BS on COX's part, I went to their web site and found a modem they claimed was DOCSIS 3.1 and compatible with their service. I purchased the modem from BestBuy, but when following the modem manufacturer's instructions for COX activation via COX web site, it failed (waited on activation to complete for several hours and gave up). I then called COX tech support number listed for Internet service activation, provided the tech with the MAC etc. and while waiting for the activation which he could not do, he tried to set up a "service call" by a tech with a replacement modem since the one I had could not be activated (despite all status indicators being normal). I told him that the modem was purchased from BestBuy and then he told me "UNLESS THE MODEM IS SUPPLIED BY COX IT WILL NOT WORK WITH COX INTERNET SERVICE". So, once again COX web site falsely advertises available services for specific hardware models! AND THEY GET AWAY WITH IT BECAUSE THEY ARE AN UNREGULATED MONOPOLY TELECOM PROVIDER!!
AND THE KNOWINGLY CONTINUE TO MAKE FALSE CLAIMS AND "SERVICE ADJUSTMENTS" SOLELY TO INCREASE PROFITS WITHOUT IMPROVEMENTS TO QUALITY, QUANTITY OF SERVICE OR "CUSTOMER CARE".
That's why, when talking to anyone about my telecom services I say, "COX - say it out loud - that's what you have to deal with - a bunch of....!
