Are you fed up with excessively high data usage?
I've been a network engineer for several years, my boss for much longer. We have been compiling tons of information on Cox and the way they do "business" for awhile now under different alias' and addresses. With enough leverage, I feel like we have collected sufficient data to finally push back and would like to compare / contrast with others of a similar mindset. I am absolutely confident at this point there is a case to be made here. I doubt we will garner enough support to achieve a class action, but it certainly doesn't hurt to try. That being said, we are more than happy to take on a standard lawsuit ourselves and leave "you" anonymous. If you would like to discuss this in more depth please send me an email at - oldbadgernewtricks@gmail.com (not my primary email for obvious reasons) if you have any material you would like to add or would just simply like to support. I'm not here to debate or discuss on the forums and frankly I don't expect this post to remain up for long, I am just going through the proper channels first so I can document them deleting my post before escalating to more visible options.
Data Usage inconsistencies
First, we are a 20+ year customer of Cox. We live on an acre+ with2 neighbors within wifi distance. No one is on my network, as I authorize devices identified on my network. I have a long history with Cox to compare. Sooo... Cox had all sorts of issues in our neighborhood last month. I had a tech come out and he identified some cable issues...which was old and had a splitter in the roadside box with a branch to nowhere in an unknown conduit. Changing the cable/adapters helped a bit, but we still experienced drops. About2 weeks latera new board was installed in that nodeand the system is a bit more stable. However, with as much down time as we experienced inthe month of November, we somehow set a new record high data usage. So far this month, while trying to push usage down, I'm still on pace to equal that of November. To compare...We used less than 600 GB in September and about 800 in October. November went over 1100 GB...and we have never exceeded 1000 prior since caps data caps went into effect. Over the years, we tend to run around 700-800GB/mo. Now it seems I have a 50% increase for unknown reasons. I went thru every device last night and the settings are dumbed down on every device. We stream on Amazon Fire sticks mostly. This has been the setup for years. I know this isn't significant, but inconsistencies bother me. It should not fluctuate like it does. The wife and I are boring. WE don't even watch HD movies. We mostly watch old shows, news, home improvement, travel, golf, etc. Not 4K HD live streams. I can't imagine how that would effect the usage....or would it? Do we have any control over usage? We don't vary much in our lifestyle/viewing habits, yet the results fluctuate wildly...how is that? I'm still looking for that answer after many requests...and now doing so again after a record setting month with no explanation as to why. In Mesa AZ.
Huge spike in data usage since switching to Gigablast
My brother and I switched to Gigablast last month, and this current cycle we have used more data each day (according to our Cox online account) than we did during our HIGHEST usage day last billing cycle. Is this due to Gigblast and having the ability to download things faster and in higher quality? We have not changed anything in terms of the number of devices using the internet, streaming significantly more shows, games, videos, etc. We have maintained our usage of devices, yet, we have apparently used 86% of our 1.28 TB data plan in 13 days (almost exactly what we used in 30 days last cycle). This is very strange. Has anyone else had a similar issue? What can we do about it, besides upgrading our data plan, which we are trying to avoid?