Internet Has Been Out for Days, Yet Cox Tells Me I'm the Problem
I'd like to find out if anyone else has had an experience with Cox as terrible as my recent experience in Oklahoma City, OK: My home internet has been out for 3 or 4 days now. It started when our modem suddenly stopped getting any signal from Cox. The modem has power and has shown zero issues up to this point. I thought maybe it was that particular coaxial connection, so I tried hooking the modem up in other rooms around the house that that have a connection available. Same issue: modem powers on, but no connection to Cox. I then got on the Cox website to verify that my modems MAC and Serial Numbers were correct, as well as to try and reset my modem from my online account settings. Still no improvement. So, I decided to chat with a Cox support agent. The FIRST agent I talked to looked into all kinds of things and ended up telling me that I needed a new modem (which, of course they immediately started trying to sell me one of theirs). I said no thanks, went to the store, and bought a new modem. The new modem is the exact same brand and model (Netgear CM500) as the previous modem I'd been using for years with Cox, so I know for a fact it is compatible. I get home, I hookup the new modem, but still no connection to Cox. I try to activate the modem according to both the manufacturers instructions and the instructions on the Cox website, but I can't finish it myself because, of course, Cox can't establish a connection to the modem! So, I decide to chat with a Cox support agent AGAIN. The SECOND agent has me provide the MAC and Serial Number of the new modem so that they can activate it on my account for me. I provide them all of this information, and they tell me that they have activated the modem on their end, but that they still can't establish a connection to the new modem. Then, all of a sudden, the chat session ends before I can get anything else from them. Big help that was, Cox! Once again, I reach out to a Cox support agent. I tell the THIRD agent everything that's happened up to this point, about the sudden disconnection on my old modem, going out and buying a new modem, going through the headache of getting the new modem activated, and getting disconnected from the previous agent. This agent wants all the MAC and Serial Number information again so they can make sure the modem is activated. I provide all the information to them, they tell me the modem is activated "on their end", and that I need to reset the modem (unplug it, wait 10 seconds, plug back in). Then they tell me to "wait a while", I'm assuming so that Cox can try to connect to the modem. After about 10 or 15 minutes of waiting, and still no connection, this agent tells me that it's a problem with my modem. UM, EXCUSE ME? You mean, this brand new modem that the FIRST agent told me to go buy for absolutely no reason? Not likely. At this point I told the third agent that I'd like a technician to come out to my house and check the Cox lines outside because the only remaining possibility is that there's an issue with their equipment. The third agent then told me that they can't send a technician to my house because they're not allowed to touch equipment that's not provided by Cox (in reference to the modem). I tell them that's fine, because I'm not asking them to touch my modem, I want them to check up on their own equipment! The agent then goes back to insisting that the issue is with my brand new equipment. Well, of course it is, because Cox is just infallible, right?! At this point, I'm ready to drop Cox all together. I've never had such a poor customer service experience in my life. I worked in customer service for a number of years, and it never once occurred to me to tell a customer "it's not us, it's you" if I hadn't already exhausted every possibility on our end first. It's a shame too, because this is really the first issue I've ever had with Cox. At this point, the hot spot on my T-Mobile phone is providing a more reliable connection for my home than Cox seems able to. In the meantime, I've talked with co-workers who live in nearby cities who've told me that their Cox service has been out for the exact same amount of time, with the exact same symptoms (modem suddenly receives no signal), who've been told the exact same thing by customer service agents (go buy a new modem), then been treated the exact same way after the recommendation doesn't work ("it's not us, it's you"). Is anyone else starting to see a pattern here?
You're Not Crazy It's Happening To Everyone
I can't read one more. I can't read one more post that says, "my modem drops dozens of times a day, and comes back up minutes later, sometimes it's unusable for HOURS, I've rebooted, and reset, and refreshed, and I've replaced ALL of my equipment, I've called Cox dozens of times, techs have visited my house over and over, and it's STILL HAPPENING, EVERY DAY." It's not a user-end issue, and I can't believe that with ALL OF THESE IDENTICAL REPORTS (and you can add mine - identical), that Cox is just plum mystified (and always, EXTREMELY RETICENT TO ISSUE ANY KIND OF CREDIT FOR THEIR BREACH OF CONTRACT). It's too much. That's enough. The Federal Communications Commission is there to protect consumers from this fraud and abuse, and by God, I'll be calling on them to do so. Investigative journalists live to expose greed and corruption, and the lack of antitrust measures governing utilities like Cox is fertilizer for the kind of stink Cox gives you for hundreds of dollars a month. So anyway, does anyone have any suggestions, he asked rhetorically. (incidentally, the sheer VOLUME of tags, crowd-sourced, shows where the stakeholders are:)
Is there any way to get the service i pay for?
I'm generally a tolerant person. I'm not one to complain about a service or meal unless its absolutely horrendous. Yet here i am, so you know where this is going. We recently moved to Phoenix AZ from Kansas City MO where we thoroughly enjoyed our Google Fiber internet service (gigabit up, gigabit down, Unlimited data, $70 a month) We had it go down about once in 5 years. Night and day better than your service in every way, probably why you lobbied to keep Google out of Phoenix, but I digress. Now we have Cox, because that's our only option. To say we are completely frustrated and angry is a severe understatement. At first it was annoying how much more we had to pay for worse service. Gigablast, plus having to pay for unlimited data means a cool $179.00 a month, and only a 30mb upload speed compared to the gigabit we had. But hey, at least it was mostly pretty stable. Until this June. Since then its down nearly every day, often multiple times a day. What is going on? I pay 179 a month and for the past 2 months its down ALL THE TIME. 5 times a week, at a minimum. When it is working, we often get .5mb upload speeds. This is completely unacceptable. No bill credits for the horrible service, no discounts. Just horrible service with no apologies. Funny how if i don't pay my bill ill get a late fee, but you dont have to pay a fee when you don't provide the service you are supposed to. I get that you guys have a monopoly and really don't care, but PLEASE at least fix your service so it functions reliably. Not only am i having to pay outrageous sums every month for sub par service, but as i work from home, you are literally costing me money. I've tried calling, I cant ever get ahold of anyone who will help or cares, at best they kick me to chat service with someone in Bangladesh. In fact, right now I'm hot-spotting my phone just so I can log into your forums to tell you how bad your service is and plead with you to do SOMETHING about it. I'm fully aware you don't care, I'm fully aware you probably wont help me either. I have no choice but to pay you for your horrible service if i want internet at my house. But hey, at least I feel a little bit better getting to vent about it.Inconsistent Service Disruptions (i.e. T3,T11,T4) - since July service work
Location: 85255 Modem: Arris SB6183 , no spliter Service Level: 300mbps Issues: Modem Event logs (see screen shot below) Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - T3 time-out; TLV-11 - unrecognized OID Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, But no Unicast Maintenance opportunities received - T4 time out Unicast Ranging Received Abort Response - Re-initializing MAC DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out Description of Issue: No internet service for 2-5 minutes that occurs periodically between 3-5 times during the day. I noticed the issue began approximately a week after notification from HOA that Cox was completing 2nd service operation in area, which occurred near end of July. Resolution Actions: Called Cox support - 25min with online chat Tier1 support that gave me support # then waited 45min to speak with Tier2 support to have a person run a reboot and tell me all levels check out fine after reboot. I explained the logged events the Tier2 was not sure what to do, so offered having a data tech come out, though I would have to pay $100 if nothing is found. Researched T3,T4, & T11 events - https://docsismodem.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/t1t2t3-t4-timeouts-descriptions/ T3 event - "This typically is caused by noise on the upstream that causes the loss of MAC-layer messages." and "If the cable modem cannot raise its upstream transmit power level to a level that allows successful communication within the maximum timeout period, it resets its cable interface and restarts the registration process." ; which is reason for the service disruptions. Researched Cox Internet forum : I found the following posts that started approximately 3-4 weeks ago, which coincides with the 1st scheduled field maintenance notification I received from HOA. Prior to the maintenance I and seems these events were not as common. Constant Outages (1month ago) Frequent Internet Drops (30 days ago) Intermittent T3 timeouts (30 days ago) Internet Drops and Intermittent Modem Reboots (27 days ago) Constant Outages / Chandler (1 month ago) CONSTANT OUTAGES (26 days ago) Random disconnects, packet loss, fluctuating power levels (1 month ago) Random disconnects getting worse (12 days ago) Intermittent Disconnects T3 time-out, CM1100 status and logs (16 days ago) Internet constantly dropping for the past week (9 days ago) Dynamic range window violation ( 9 days ago) Internet going out again every day between 10 and 12 (11 days ago) Outcome from Resolution Actions: Issues still exists for me, and was informed neighbors are having similar issue Cox suggested having a tech come out, though I have to cover the $100 if nothing is found. This is odd since I found the above posts, people are calling to cause waits of a minimum of 30min, but Cox acts as if this is all being made up. Many others in the Phoenix metro area have same issues , therefore this is not an isolated issue or related to a specific modem. Conclusion: Field maintenance modifications during the month of July has resulted in consistent issues across the area. The service disruption issues are "... signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) on the upstream to a point where the cable modem’s power level is insufficient to transmit any messages." , which results in "...it resets its cable interface and restarts the registration process.". Cox only you all are aware of the modifications made in July the result was been disruptive during the past 3-4 weeks. This situation will only get worse as more schools start! I have no idea what needs to be resolved, but I've got many years in IT; when a change is bad back-it-out. Cox what do you need from customers to get this resolved? What do I need to do to get this resolved? IMO if this continues during the next 2 weeks as schools come online the calls will increase to support, city counsel, and state organizations ; people are going to not be kind. Screenshots from Modem Monday Aug-3 to Sunday Aug-9Cox is throttling connection speeds for specific services.
I pay for 300 down service, and for the past month or so, it barely reaches over 100 Mbps, which is fine, everyone is home and eating up bandwidth, and 100 Mbps is more than enough for most things anyways; just hope it's not long term. I have been noticing though that specific things will literally kill the internet in the entire household, as if I can only do one thing at a time, or no one else can even do simple things like check their email. So I ran some tests. Keep in mind, in the last three months, I have used roughly half of my data cap each month, so I'm not a "power user" per se, and I haven't gotten an email from Cox complaining about my use. I ran speed tests about three times for each test and averaged it. I also ran the baseline (no usage in the entire household) after each test to make sure I was back to my "typical" speeds. In some cases I couldn't even run the tests, but maybe once, but here was my results (I'm not including upload as that speed was consistent through all my tests: No usage: 92 Mbps down on average Steam @8 Mbps: 65 Mbps down on average Steam @12 Mbps: 39 Mbps down on average Steam @16 Mbps: 52 Mbps down on average - This was the only successful result out of many attempts (six total attempts, all but one timing out), browsing the web at this time was EXTREMELY spotty. Steam was successfully downloading at the speed I set it to download at though. Steam @80 Mbps: No results - Steam fluctuated between 40 and 80 Mbps (at one point hitting 98 Mbps briefly and going as low as 25 Mbps briefly), but the internet was completely useless for the whole household during this time. Since I average around 100 Mbps the last few weeks, I would probably expect this, since I was using up pretty much all of my bandwidth at this time. YouTube @720p: 92 Mbps down - YouTube was recommending this quality based on my connection YouTube @1080p: 86 Mbps down YouTube @1440p: 86 Mbps down - Video played without issue, but the internet was very spotty. This was the only successful attempt out of four attempts. YouTube @4k: No result - Results similar to Steam at 16 and 80 Mbps - internet was useless during this time, but the video played without issue. So, as a gamer, I use Steam a lot. What's nice is that while downloading a game, I can specify the speed and monitor it (I was downloading Horizon Zero Dawn). As you can see, simply using 8 Mbps had an average of an almost 30 Mbps drop in speed! Using Steam at 12 Mbps, almost a 60 Mbps drop in speed!. Using Steam at 16 Mbps, out of six attempts, all but one timed out and I got 52 Mbps, otherwise the internet was completely useless in the rest of the house hold. Using Steam at 80 Mbps (almost all my bandwidth) there was literally no access to anything on any device connected to the network. Here's the thing though, at 8, 12, 16, and 80 Mbps - Steam was downloading at these speeds without hiccup. So, at 16 Mbps, I was downloading a game at the full 16 Mbps, but the rest of the household was dead in the water and it would return to my baseline average when I pause the download. This tells me it's not a general issue of spotty or slow service. YouTube had similar results. YouTube was recommending 720p based on my connection, which uses very little bandwidth and the results here showed that. 1080p, while no major loss in speeds, YouTube was definitely not playing the video at 1080p, but it was close (and may have just been the video). YouTube at 1440p on the other hand, the video looked good, played without buffering, but I was only able to get one test out of multiple attempts, which did hit 86 Mbps, but the rest of the home was also dead in the water in terms of connection. YouTube at 4k, again, like Steam at 80 Mbps, it was playing the video fine, not buffering, but otherwise the internet was complete useless for the rest of the household. I ran a test with Netflix and had no issues. I assume this is because Netflix pay ISPs so they can get priority, so I assume this is why there isn't any throttling issues there. I did a second series of tests using a VPN. Using a VPN, my connection is encrypted, so Cox cannot see what service I specifically connecting to. Typically VPNs are going to be slower, but I pay for a good VPN service, so my speeds are pretty good with it. Dramatic differences. No usage: 89 Mbps down on average Steam @8 Mbps: 84 Mbps down on average Steam @12 Mbps: 78 Mbps down on average Steam @16 Mbps: 77 Mbps down on average Steam @80 Mbps: 22 Mbps down on average YouTube @720p: 89 Mbps down on average YouTube @1080p: 87 Mbps down on average YouTube @1440p: 87 Mbps down on average - YouTube was recommending this quality based on my connection YouTube @4k: 80 Mbps down The drops were marginal running Steam at 8, 12, and 16 Mbps and even running it at 80 Mbps, I was getting a constant and stable connection, and the rest of the household didn't come to a full stop. YouTube was recommending a 1440p quality automatically, not 720p and as you can see. Even with a 4k video, I was experiencing a marginal drop in download speed. My suspicions is that Cox is basically saying "If you want to use this high bandwidth service, you need to trade off the rest of your bandwidth" basically forcing you to only really do one thing at a time. This is an issue, with everyone home during COVID, for me to successfully work at home, I basically have to tell everyone to not use the internet, because if the wife decides to watch a YouTube video, it makes work difficult. I'm forced to use my VPN so Cox doesn't know where I'm connecting to and won't throttle my speeds. There was a series of news articles of a power user in my area that was being throttled back in June. I have contacted all of those journalists with this information. Trying to get a hold of Cox has been difficult since COVID and it appears they did away with the web chat (which is easier for me during working hours).
