Complaint Review: Cox Communications

After an internal upgrade to their service, I was rendered OFFLINE for the most part, for over a week. I could not send anything over 256 bytes in size. It didn't matter if it was email, a post on the internet through a website, etc. I contacted their service department and gave them detailed information. They concluded that I needed a tech to visit me. At that time and all subsequent times they did not tell me I would be charged for a service call. The tech showed up, and I told him about what I found out, that I can surf the internet, even get email, but if I try to send anything (a packet for example) over 256 bytes I'm disconnected. He hooked up his laptop, when nuts on the keyboard, and all of a sudden I had a connection. He was even proud to show that to me, again on his laptop. I was mystified. He told me my cable modem was incompatible or fried. I asked if he had a cable modem I could get and COX could charge me the lease fee. He said no but he could sell me his for $50. I thought that was a little odd so I said no. When he started to leave, I noticed my cable modem was still disconnected so I asked him to look and see if it was working now. He told me he was in a hurry but I insisted. After RECONNECTING my cable modem, all of a sudden, I was able to email and upload.

What the tech didn't know is that I tried everything throughout the week. Cycling the equipment, even trying a friend's cable modem and calling cox to enable it. Same results. I went online to search this anomaly and found that their upgrade turned off some ports on some nodes, and a tech was needed to turn them back on.

End result, Cox charged me a $50 service fee for the visit and never gave that money back. I have been fighting with them about it for almost a year.

I don't know where to go to get satisfaction for this but I wish I did. If anyone can give me some suggestions I'd certainly would appreciate it.

The end result after the visit, the Linksys cable modem I was using was working fine but my throughput was slow, so I DID go buy a Motorola Surf Modem and the throughput was faster. But... I was totally offline, and after the visit, my so-called incompatible modem was working albeit slowly. They messed up on some ports, and charged me for it.

And the fact that they didn't admit to it or take care of me as a customer makes me feel like I was totally taken advantage of.


Gary
Mesa, Arizona
U.S.A.