Hello Cox PR <facebookfan@cox.com>,
I am a Cox Sucker. I have been a customer of Cox Communications far too long. At my current and previous address, I have spent $5,098.74 on Cox services. Let me give you some technical and customer service advice. Perhaps you may become less hated, and I may even decide NOT to charge you for this advice.
The best way for a cable television operator to do their job is to adhere to the technical specifications of the network protocols and hardware. Not to slather everything up with a foamy mess of exclusionary freebies, and data over-subscription rates most other countries would laugh at.
Now don’t feel all bad. You aren’t the only one. Cox has decidedly misappropriated it’s network bandwidth as a means of over-subscription, and artificial scarcity, between continued Analog broadcast, and forcing ALL customers to pay for Analog channels they may never even watch. How much does it cost at a minimum to get High-Definition programming from Cox? TOO MUCH. This does not account for all the manual time spent by myself the customer.
Cox TV Starter $23.00
Expanded Service $34.99
Advanced TV $17.95
CableCARD $1.99
------------------------------
Total $77.93 before all the other cruft+taxes.
Am I, an out-of-work, physically disabled, highly technical, apartment dweller even able to put up a directional antenna capable of Free Over The Air Digital TV reception? Not likely. Does Cox, unlike myself, have contracted roof access to the buildings which I live for installation purposes? Yes, that’s where your cable drops run from.
I live in a one bedroom apartment in a complex of maybe 30 or so buildings, with 8 or more units per building, built in the 1978. My rent is $1275/month. I have one television, and a TiVo HD. I REFUSE to use one of your set-top-boxes or DVR devices. Although, I did let you sell me a used cable modem for way too much money, as a convenience long ago.
Cox’s constant overselling of overpriced home phone service to me via the United States Postal Service. Every month I receive about 2 or more LARGE, hard stock paper, telephone advertisements which offer 6 months of free service. No, thanks I pay pennies for a VOIP line, and we already know I have a mobile phone. How much of this wasted advertising, and 1/2 year free of services money could be spent on healthcare for your hard working employees? Shameless.
Cox video services, programming guides, and hardware, are constantly plastered with Advertising of your own branded products and services most of which are not even available to CableCard users as myself. Is it even possible to use your website to order services or modify services as a cable card user? NO.
When I first got CableCard service it took way too many visits by your techs, and senior techs who knew nothing about how to make it work, this went on for months. Even now with switched digital video, many channels my TiVo notifies me have been added, I may or may not get depending on the weather of your network.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Switched_video
Video-on-Demand, (with commercials inserted, I’ve been to friend’s houses.)
Every video channel distributed over your network, even and especially the children’s network television, has FAR too much advertising from COX. And what even makes all this less professional of Cox, all your commercials and then the “local inserts” you sell, are ALWAYS broadcast in Standard Definition. Way to sell that “superior DIGITAL product” it looks horrible on my high definition television, outlined black bars on four sides. Also the timing of most commercial inserts and EAS / Emergency Broadcast Tests are not lined up to the original commercial advertisement signaling.
The fact that you offer so many added services for “FREE” to users of your hardware to no end makes me an unhappy customer daily. Why should one person, with one television set, pay the same amount as a residence with tens of televisions and or people? The consumer cost of a product is what a majority of people are willing to pay for it. With your CableCard and non-DSL internet, monopoly you control all the prices.
Cox Internet speeds are laughable.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/DOCSIS#Speed_tables
DOCSIS 1.0 was ratified in the mid 1990′s. Now in the 1990′s, I was a user of this same South Orange County cable network. It offered FULL DOCSIS 1.0 technology and upload speeds. How is this “raising the speeds year after year”, as Cox advertises to me and countless others? The argument of a tiered internet as your Twitter account @Cox_Tech1 has given to me, is infallible in that you are abusing the 15 year old DOCSIS technology to not have to actually improve the network further.
You are now currently selling DOCSIS 3.0 hardware and service plans on a network that doesn’t meet full DOCSIS 1.0 upload potential. I get consistently better upload speeds using my TMobile phone in my living room.
Where I live in Laguna Hills, CA, Cox Communications is the ONE and ONLY Cable Television provider which offers CableCard service. Congratulations on the well played game of monopoly.
Attached are the most recent PDF bills, CSV export of all my payments to Cox Communications, and a picture of the last three months usage of my Internet. That first dark gray part was where I had to keep my laptop powered on, for over a month in order to get a complete backup to my provider JungleDisk.com.
I may have left something out, but this set of complaints should suffice for now. You guys have a lot of work ahead trying to figure out how to allow ale’ carte’ programming. I am tired of paying for 500 channels and nothing good is ever on, but in order for me to get HBO or watch a channel which has no commercials… you know the game. You wrote your own rules, or paid a lobbyist to do it for you.
I would prefer to keep this discussion over email.
Cox advertises “to be a friend in the Digital Age.” Right now I feel like the huge Sucker.
–
-r0b
1-949-436-6246
Videos of some complaints
http://2ff.us/CoxSuckers
Previous Blog posts:
http://blog.playerx.net/2008/02/28/a-cox-con-versation-its-all-just-a-scam-podcast/
http://blog.playerx.net/2009/01/06/cox-orange-county-92653-cable-card-channel-list/
http://blog.playerx.net/2008/03/11/satisfaction-is-watching-television-on-my-own-terms-using-my-tivo/
http://blog.playerx.net/2008/01/09/exclusionary-and-discriminatory-tactics-of-the-cox-cable-company/
update:
My cable provider is Cox Communications. The previous DOCSIS 2.0 modem I was using, an Ambit, was sold to me by Cox. As you can see in the results images below, DOCSIS 2.0 could theoretically max out it’s download speeds of 40mbit during off-peak hours like 4am.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/DOCSIS#Speed_tables
Just after Midnight, and most hours of the day yield results similar to this, if not considerably worse.
After a brief conversation with the tech, and without even changing or upgrading the internet plan I pay for, the new modem gave me considerably positive results. Your results may vary.
About 59.20Mbit/down 4.35Mbit/up
79Mbit/4.5Mbit
Notice that the upload is still severely restricted to well below capable DOCSIS upload technical standards.
Also note that uploads to YouTube are still being throttled, as 271Kb/s was the quickest I was able to upload using the DOCSIS 2.0 modem.
Just a sample graph from my firewall. The gray dip is from when I uploaded my videos today, 1.4GB. The red jumps are mainly speed tests, while the later red skyscraper is me doing an actual test of bandwidth downloading multiple ISO and image files from 4 separate FreeBSD mirrors.
These tweets I made earlier sums up the illusions of this consumer internet experience.
UPDATE 2011.12.01
Finally a response.
