$25 Returned Payment Fee
I pay my Cox bill with my credit card using auto-pay. I received an updated credit card, as often happens to everyone. It has the same card number, but a different expiration date, even though the old card wasn't set to expire for quite some time. On Dec 13, the following occurred (in this order): I activated my new card, which instantly deactivated the old one. I starting going to my various auto-pay sites to change my card info, but hadn't gotten to the Cox site yet. I received an email from Cox saying my auto-payment didn't go through. I went to the Cox site, updated my card info, made a payment, and reactivated auto-pay. I continued to update my card info at other sites. A few days ago, I got a letter from Cox saying my account had been slapped with a $25 returned payment fee. My payment was due Dec 13, and I made the successful payment Dec 13. The payment was not late. The fee was not for making a late payment. Cox just happened to hit that short window between when I activated the new card (deactivating the card on file) and updated my card info @ Cox. (I have since called Cox. The person I spoke with was about 98% sure Cox would reverse the charge because I have been a customer for a long time, and there were no other issues. We'll see.) I called my credit union, which issued my credit card. I was told they do not charge Cox (or anyone else) when Cox attempts to charge a credit card, but is unable to do so. They also do not charge Cox when a paper check bounces. The credit union person I talked with suggested that now that people are moving away from using paper checks and are using paperless methods instead, companies are losing the revenue they received from bounced checks. Therefore, they (I only know of Cox doing this) are now using the "returned payment fee" for credit cards/auto-pay. Even before she suggested this, I knew Cox was doing this simply to increase revenue and rip-off their customers. Imagine all the times people run a card through a card reader at a check-out at a store, and it gets rejected because the person ddint' realize the card had expired. What if there was a $25 fee every time that happened? Totally unreasonable. In Cox's terma/agreements/policies, this situation is considered "insufficient funds." Now, if you bounce a check, that is typically because of insufficient funds, but when a credit card doesn't work, that could be due to many things. In my case, there was still about $10,000 of credit left on that card, so insufficient funds does not apply. AND the credit card number had not changed, so the credit card number was still valid! AND I paid the darned bill ON TIME! There are many lessons here. One lesson is, know all of your auto-pay due dates (they seem to be all over the place). If you get a new credit card, choose a day that is not a due date or even near a due date to activate your card and update your card info on all of your auto-pay sites. Cox will lose customers over this. It won't matter to them, though, because these returned payment fees will make up for lost customers. If they don't reverse that charge for me, or they ever do this to me again, I will also leave the company.17KViews2likes2Comments
Outage again?!?!?!
last night at midnight an outage. Automated response from TAC is "outage in my area, back up at 6am. Fine, stuff happens. Now tonight, at midnight again - outage. Same automated response from TAC...outage in my area, back up at 6. This is quite peculiar and seems like a planned outage to me. Why can't they let us know ahead of time? Or have info on the site? I mean, Sam time out and same time back on, two days in a row? I'm trying to get work done, and now I'm hosed. Anybody know if an URL or board that advises if outages by Cox, if planned? Quite frankly, this smells fishy and **.Solved4KViews1like4Comments