By an edhat reader
What’s up with Cox being out in the Oak Park area during the Laker game for the second straight game?
ETA – Midnight, and it’s been out since noon. What’s up?
Cox Outage During Laker Game?
SB Barbarian
May 20, 2023, 6:13 am
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Written by SB Barbarian
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Can it be… “fixed?” Tried my 3.7GB download of Manjaro KDE Plasma again just now and when it started off at 500Kbps I almost canceled again, but unlike last time’s steady decline it began to speed up. When it stabilized at 6MBps I left it running and opened this tab to post. Maybe everyone gave up on streaming and turned to other weekend activities, but hope lives that Cox is at least back to usable speed for streaming. I did note though that the speed briefly dipped below 2MBps and is still varying, so the joys of monopoly are alive in my “Frontier Fiber Not Available” neighborhood. Frankly though, once they drive Cox out it seems likely their rates will increase dramatically to pay off their costs from buying the POTS phone company pole access to run their fiber and offering the currently low rates (and start reaping a decade of growing profits). I also recall the quality of their unusable “service” when we held onto landline for a few months before switching that number to free gVoice and going $10/line cell unlimited voice/text ($5/GB data) on Ting Verizon (chose “TingV” over their T-Mobile option). Did you know that the Monopoly board game was bought by a monopoly and changed into a winner take all game? But I digress. 😉
Not only can we not get Frontier fiber, we cannot get Verizon or AT&T fiber fast intenet service in our area, either. One we can, Cox is dead to me. I did cut the cable cord in favor of streaming services, however, as you point out how the prices will rise from competitors once Cox is driven out, streaming services are similarly starting to nickel and dime us and raise prices. Streaming services are hiking prices all the time, and I suspect there wll be a big shakeup in that industry, with mergers and consolidation, and of course, rate increases.
JW, I had a similar negative experience with COX five or more years ago.
My download speed deteriorated to about 700 Kb/s. Cox came and trouble shot the problems and said it was my equipment. I bought a new modem and router. No change. Many more service calls without solutions ensued.
I finally got the telephone number of the COX San Diego technical service division, and more importantly, the name and phone number of the lead technician in my area: Manny Saltero.
Manny ran a separate tap from the COX coax down the phone pole that is across the street. When the problem occurred (almost daily in the afternoon), he was able to duplicate it with his equipment connected to his drop down the phone pole, i.e., there was no problem with my equipment, and their forcing me to buy new equipment was both an insult, and insight into how poor their technical service was, i.e., force the problem off onto the customer and hope it goes away.
It took COX nine months to find the problem. It was in a pole mounted node box located about 3-blocks from me. When it would get heated by the afternoon sun, it would malfunction.
You might deduce that I am an electrical engineer, and I don’t give up until the problem is solved.
That’s a great story. Mine is … my cable modem was getting intermittent connections to the head end. Cox came out quickly and replaced my modem with their own equipment to run diagnostics. They discovered the cable running from the pole to my house was full of water! The cable was so old, it didn’t have waterproof connectors. The water was probably shorting the center conductor to the shield. Replacing the cable (with waterproof connectors) solved the issue. So their repair crew did a great job.
That said, I’ll probably switch to Frontier Fiber when available. Cox is very opaque when it comes to pricing. They could not provide me with an a la carte pricing menu last time I asked and insisted on offering me bundles with no info for me to do pricing comparisons. Cox’s *UPLOAD* jitter also isn’t great in my hood (during the day) which makes video conferencing and VoIP apps perform poorly (even though my router settings are optimized for VoIP).
On the other hand, Frontier service is a wildcard. Before the pandemic they had a team working on a huge cable containing hundreds of twisted pairs on our street for two months (they’d show up for a few days, then leave the cable dangling for a week before returning, then repeat). The guys were nice and said they lost a lot of Verizon employees during the transition to Frontier. Hopefully that’s changed.
I did not experience a outage during the game 5/20/23. But I did have my TNT service drop during the last celtic-miami game in the 3rd quarter.
The only outage I experienced last night was the Lakers’ performance. It looks like it’s going to be a Nuggets victory, but there was no stopping them. Bummer!
I am afraid you are correct. I’m an eternal optimist. Denver has to win 4, and they only have 3. Ask Golden State about that. lol However, the realist in me accepts that the season is winding down for the Lakers soon than I had hoped. For perspective, however, with about two weeks to go in the season, I wasn’t even watching their games and figurede they wouldn’t even make the play-in games. So, getting to the Conference Finals again for the 42nd time in the team’s history seems like a pretty coll thing to me, even if they don’t move on to the finals. I was hoping for the Lakers to face off against their bitter rival, the Celtics for the 13th time, but it doesn’t look good for either team in that scenario with the Lakers down 3-0 , and the Celtics down 2-0. Maybe next year. lol
Cox is terrible and way overpriced. I really hope frontier and others come into town as to drive competition and lower prices.
I dismissed Cox last December after Frontier ran fiber optic throughout my neighborhood. What a refreshing change. My bill for Cox (internet and TV) along with my telephone bill was about $360/mo.
COX was 10 mb/sec upload and 300 mb/sec download (slow). Frontier is 1G/sec upload and download (fast). Emailing pictures now takes only seconds.
The Frontier supplied router provides WiFi, along with the EERO WiFi extenders, so we have WiFi throughout our home.
Now, Frontier supplies Internet ($42.99/mo) and telephone ($10/month). We get TV via YouTubeTV on the Internet through a Roku box (one time $29.99 purchase for Roku streaming box for our one TV that does not natively receive the Internet via WiFi).
YouTubeTV has more selections than Cox. For the ones we watch, almost all are free.
I have a single fiber optic cable that goes from my home to the central office. There are no intervening electronic boxes. Unlike Cox, when the power goes out (think PSPS), we don’t lose emergency telephone or Frontier. The battery backup only is needed until my natural gas powered backup power generation kicks in. There are battery backup boxes for the OTA box (Optical Terminal Assembly) and for the router/WiFi/phone box, so we never lose the ability to call 911.
I am just a happy Frontier customer, and have no other financial relationship with Frontier.
This is a follow up to my last comment. I mentioned that I represent three family households when it comes to Cox issues because I speak, “Cox”. This is a true fact: All three households have identical internet service and rent their most current router/modem, plus phone service, becaue it is more expensive to NOT have phone service. I know, but that’s the way it has always been since Cox offered phone service. That’s not the point, however. The bills of each household vary by as much as 55%. I am in the process of decipheriintg the bills of each household to determine why, and to get all three households on the lowest plan, plus, each household is eleigible for an additional $30 montly credit due to a number of criteria which qualify them. Note – you have to ask Cox to apply it and prove you qualify, but it is worth it.
Thanks for the info. I’ll be right behind you when/if Frontier/AT&T/Verizon services my neighborhood. I get promotional material from all of them offering high speed broadband service, but none of those companies services my neighborhood – I have inquired and even spoken with humans about it. The day one of them is available, it will be “Hasta la vista, Cox!” I’ve been forced to be with them since 1974, when they came and obtained a monopoly to “serve” this area. I successfully “cut the cable” two years ago, and have You Tube TV for sports and other live events mostly. I have a few streaming services that are part of “bundles”, and a few I pay for. I am the “designated Cox rep” for three family households, and we are all down to internet only. We are collectively saving more than $400 per month with vastly more content, free DVR service, etc. BTW – I WAS able to watch the Laker game using my iPhone as a hotspot. I didn’t get “gig” speed, but I watched the entire game, and there were no streaming issues. It makes me expect that “6G” or “7G” will make wired cable TV obsolete. It seems as if it is teetering on the edge right now. I notice Cox is now offering wireless service. I guess the handwriting is on the wall.
The horse race froze, so we only got to see replays.
PDude: But howw is your repair record with Frontier? Ours was abysmal, started asking in January for repairs when our line would go out during rain, got fixed last week. Not great.
For me, COX service and support is atrocious. That paired with absurdly high prices makes the switch worthwhile. Besides one can always switch back.
Could have been caused by Denver shooting the lights out!!
Haha! Nice one.
Cox is essentially dead 101@154. I was seeing it slow down Friday, barely usable yesterday, and it’s gotten much worse today. It looks to me like they started throttling, i.e. starting off at a speed fast enough to load a web page (2Mbps), and if you try to watch a show or download a large file it slows down progressively until you’re seeing 20Kbps (slower than the antique modem days, and it might eventually just stop). This morning it was starting out at 15Kbps so I unplugged the Cox router for a minute and plugged it back in, and then I was back to the 2Mbps rate but after 30 seconds it started fading again so I gave up. Hope they fix it soon.
so in our area, lower westside, Rancheria/Cliff, i had four days of disrupted service. I called Cox, spoke to someone in another country that just wanted to spin my wheels for 5 minutes verifying everything that I already verified on the phone menu while i was waiting for them to pick up (15 minute wait). I got her to stop reading from her Customer Service cutsheet and get a manager. Manager was a guy in Newport Beach. I told him what was going on and that I’m paying for their fastest service and highest tier and my speed wasn’t what i was paying and i was complaining about the outages. First he tried to tell my my equipment was faulty….sound familiar? I laughed at him, somewhat obnoxiously. I informed him that my router, and modem and wifi extender were brand new and top of the line and he too could stop reading from a sheet of lies.
Then he has the NERVE to say, oh we haven’t received your payment yet.
Like that’s going to matter?
I laughed again, hey pal, you charge a month IN ADVANCE for services not yet rendered and guess what? You bombed out several times this week. So I’ll tell you what, get my speed up to what I am paying, and credit me for the downtime, and I’ll pay. (FYI, i never pay them in advance, my bill is always ‘late’ meaning i pay it when it’s actually due and have done it this way for about 15 years).
I got half a month credit and guess what….my speed suddenly shot way up too….
funny how that works….
I had pretty much the identical experience with customer service. The first level of people who answer the phone after the robot wastes your time never can answer your questions or fix your problem, but they CAN waste your time by reading off the script in front of them. Like you said, they just regurgitate facts that you already know, and in fact, have told THEM when you originally called. They are not empowered to give credits, and the right hand never seems to know what the left hand is doing. The supervisor generally is the person who knows what the problem is, or they can find out, and they can explain how long it will take to fix it. They are also the ones with the authority to give monitary credits for outages and interruptions. You and I sound like we approach Cox in the same manner regarding the paying in advance philosophy. I like to pay for services at the time I get them or after I get them, not in advance. I hate Cox. Here’s a hint for people trying to resolve techical issues – if you call and even get transferred to a supervisor who tells you they cannot resolve your problem and have to schedule a tech to come out to check it out, don’t give up. My service had been turned off at midnight on a SATURDAY night due to a clerical error (it’s a long story). I called the first time, and was told by the supervisor that they could do nothing until the business office opened on MONDAY, and I would just have to wait. Not satisfied, I called the same number again and navigated to tech support again, and talked to an entirely different rep who, amazing had the EXACT SAME PROBLEM WITH COX HIMSELF the week before and had learned how to turn my service back on so I could resolve the issue on Monday with the business office. The first guy said it was impossible, and the second guy proved that the first guy was wrong. Two guys, working for the same company, working in the same capacity, yet one thinks it is impossible to fix your problem, and another actually fixes the problem. Never take “no” or “impossible” for an answer until you have heard it three times. Often, you can get what you need if you get a competent, properly trained and empowered employee. That is true for other service companies, too.
lots of big screen tv’s downtown playing it….
i’d have just left and gone to a sports bar if you want to see the game that badly. there is also sports radio.
Thanks. I figued out that my iPhone could act as a hotspot and I watch most of the game on my monitor. The broadband speed wasn’t as fast as what I am paying for with Cox, but I watched an entire NBA game with no buffering issues at all. I’m not a sports bar kind of guy, and radio is not TV. But thanks anyway.