ID:2289310
 
Modem died. Went to Cox store. Pushed into buying a modem I didn't really want. Came home. Found out that the modem wasn't compatible with my plan. Apparently that modem requires activation for an Ultimate plan, while I'm on a grandfathered 150mb plan (I only reliably get 50-90mb anyway, so there's literally no benefit to me upgrading and paying more than my already exorbitant bill.).

So, after 3 hours trying to deal with their support and them trying to bully me into just buying the plan, I decide to cancel the activation for the modem I picked up off them, and ran out and spent $80 on a new modem. Installation of this modem turned into a 2 hour ordeal. Apparently they kicked me off my old plan when I told them to go fuck themselves and take the modem off the plan.

Got hung up on while being juggled between apartments twice, and had a total of nine people touch my account today. And I'm still not done dealing with their stupid ass asses, because I still need to turn the modem back in tomorrow at the Cox store, and explain to them that they did not disclose that my plan was incompatible with the equipment that they specifically pushed me to buy.

Come to find out as well, the specs they listed at the counter were absurdly wrong, as they told me it was a 32-ch docsis 3.1, when it was actually a 16ch docsis 3.0. And not a very good one at that. When I FINALLY got on the line with a supervisor after five hours of this, there was a 12-month in-plan price reduction thrown on my account, and an assurance that this was not normally how business was done.

Unfortunately, I've been a customer of theirs for 4 years, trapped in a region where they have no competition. This is how business has always been done by this ISP. While I appreciated the apparent sincerity of his apology, I couldn't help but wonder whether he was genuinely deluded, or simply very good at his this particular aspect of his job. Because well paid and trained are right the fuck out considering Cox's typical service problems.


Here's hoping that the horrible speeds and connectivity problems I've been suffering from this last year really were the modem. I want to leave ISP hell. I've been through 9 layers of it the last 5 years, and there's always another one to go.


If there is a God, ISPs prove he doesn't give a shit about what happens down here on earth.
I prefer to think of groups like that as proof that the devil is real.
I'm sorry, Terri. Had to play the runaround game with Comcast plenty of times before, but nothing this bad. It's absolutely disgusting that monopolies are still allowed to exist in such shitty wrapping paper. Here's to hoping that in the next 20 years we'll get rid of them.
In response to Kats
Kats wrote:
I'm sorry, Terri. Had to play the runaround game with Comcast plenty of times before, but nothing this bad. It's absolutely disgusting that monopolies are still allowed to exist in such shitty wrapping paper. Here's to hoping that in the next 20 years we'll get rid of them.


When it comes to comcast i found my own sort of fix i bought my package told them to keep there modem i bought my own from Netgear when they installed the line i went outside and re did all the cabling cause they love to mess that shiz up to the point of no return so when the guy comes out to bury the line its my line not theirs.
...And I'm back in ISP hell.

New modem was working fine last night for a few hours, but my internet went down a few hours later. Called Cox, my area was in outage due to inclement weather (It had started sprinkling). I fail to understand how it being moist out affects cable internet. Wasn't that their whole advertising campaign back in the 90s against satellite television? "Doesn't go out when it rains!"... Serious question: How does a light rain cause cable broadband to fail?

Woke up this morning to return the modem, only to find that the internet at my apartment is still down. Called cox, they told me the outage was resolved hours ago.

Spent a few hours messing with it, and the modem's able to connect, but neither of my machines were able to bind an IP. DHCP refusal.

Did the standard ipconfig, reset winsock, uninstall drivers, reinstall. reboot, hard boot, attempt to hardline the PCs.

Everything works up to my workgroup switch. Once the modem finds one PC on the workgroup switch, nothing else on the entire network will identify. It's just the most bizarre thing in the world. Am about to run out and buy a new router, which will put me $160 in a hole to avoid paying $25 extra a month, but I'm getting to the point where I'm thinking that my old modem never died in the first place, and that this was an issue with their network the whole damn time.

Even when I do get one machine connected, the modem needs to be reset every few mintues to maintain a stable connection.

I'm so over this. Network troubleshooting isn't fun. Setting up a home network isn't fun. If you enjoy it, there's something wrong with you as a human being.

$80 for a new router vs $2.34 for a gallon of gas... Decisions, decisions.
...And I'm back from ISP hell again. $160 poorer, and shy a total of 10 hours of my time.

Internet works, and they credited me the next three months of my service thanks to an internal review of the phone call form last night.

They didn't go into detail, but from everything that's been said to me over the last few hours, the rep that told me I needed to upgrade flat out lied, and in a legally problematic way. Everybody was stepping over themselves to not specifically state that what I was told was untrue, so I'm guessing that there are actual consequences for admitting that a rep of their company misrepresented a product in order to bully a customer into electing to change an existing service agreement.

=/

Shit's been weird. Just wish this had all been a bit more painless.
I had similar issue here in Australia due to water, however that was with copper lines not cable. The conduit out the front would flood, the solution was to hang it on a barricade for 12 months not actually fix it..

It took over 3 years with constant dropouts, either rain or people screwing with it (kids).. They refused to fix it because that meant digging up the street and laying it properly, costing them $$ and involving council.

I got over 12 months free service though, but a ton of lost time talking to reps that either had no idea or didn't communicate well with the team/issue..

I did get the NBN quicker due to this as that was apparently cheaper than digging up the street, that was three years later though......

I'm not sure what America telcos are like but ours outsource absolutely everything it's hard to get any issue resolved...

One of my favourite issues was getting a tech out on a Saturday only to find out the new neighbour next door ordered a phone line, apparently the tech unplugged my copper to plug theirs in, that took over a month...
Sounds like your ISP has ghosts in its blood.
Wait your isp is called cox?

Did they know what they were naming their company when they named it that xD?
In response to Ghost of ET
Ghost of ET wrote:
Wait your isp is called cox?

Did they know what they were naming their company when they named it that xD?

Seems people are getting Screwed by the Cox xD