Cox Cable Rant

[MagnusTheBrewer]

So, I'm surfing merrily along and my connection slows and then comes to a halt. My wife says the same on her computer.

I check the modem and all lights are solid.
I reset my connection and no joy.
I reboot and no joy.
I recycle the modem and no joy.
I recycle the router and modem no joy.

My wife gets tired of my playing and tries to call Cox but, no phone. She calls on her cell and after 22 minutes of computer based phone "help," she gets to a live person and explains the problem.

He checks our account and has us recycle the modem again, no joy but, now we have phone service back. So, my wife asks him to call back so she won't burn minutes on her cell.

He calls back and asks us to recycle the modem again. Voila, we have internet again! He feeds her a lame line about conflict between the modem and router and hangs up.

I think if an ISP ever admits fault in any way, it'll be a sure sign the end is near.

 

[Fear No Evil]

Sounds like he resolved your problem.

 

[Brainonska511]

Paging Spidey so he can tell you to either: a) switch providers with all the magical competition in the area; or, b) that you should be bowing down to the cable company for all the great things they do.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Sounds like he resolved your problem.

Sounds like the problem was on his end.

 

[Fear No Evil]

Sounds like the problem was on his end.

Not to me.

 

[saratoga172]

Damn you got help within 30 minutes? I'd consider that A customer service. It takes about 45 minutes to get to an actual person here...Cox Internet as well...And about another 45 for them to tell me exactly what I was telling them was wrong in the first place.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Not to me.

So tell me how doing the exact same thing I had already done makes it a problem on my end? The one unknown is what he reset, checked or, unchecked at his end.

 

[Fear No Evil]

So tell me how doing the exact same thing I had already done makes it a problem on my end? The one unknown is what he reset, checked or, unchecked at his end.

Or, like most level 1 techies dealing with morons on the other end.. he will tell them to reset shit first.. and it worked this time. Maybe because you had a slight power surge which hung up your router, or your $19.99 Wolf T-Shirt Brand router is a POS and had to be reset multiple times to sync up to the modem? Or perhaps someone was drunk and hit a pole somewhere and took out your connection which eventually rerouted? Or maybe your PC was streaming out data on the ethernet port causing your router to hang-up? Maybe there was a large scale DoS attack on the root name servers causing EVERYONE to have slow or no connectivity.

Who the fuck knows. Your problem was resolved fairly quickly and you are on here bitching about some level 1 tech in bangladesh not knowing why your internet connection died briefly.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Or, like most level 1 techies dealing with morons on the other end.. he will tell them to reset shit first.. and it worked this time. Maybe because you had a slight power surge which hung up your router, or your $19.99 Wolf T-Shirt Brand router is a POS and had to be reset multiple times to sync up to the modem? Or perhaps someone was drunk and hit a pole somewhere and took out your connection which eventually rerouted? Or maybe your PC was streaming out data on the ethernet port causing your router to hang-up? Maybe there was a large scale DoS attack on the root name servers causing EVERYONE to have slow or no connectivity.

Who the fuck knows. Your problem was resolved fairly quickly and you are on here bitching about some level 1 tech in bangladesh not knowing why your internet connection died briefly.

No just venting some frustration but, you seem to need to vent more than me. Who pissed in your corn flakes?

 

[Fear No Evil]

No just venting some frustration but, you seem to need to vent more than me. Who pissed in your corn flakes?

Not sure why you are frustrated. You had a problem, called someone.. got someone on the line.. they fixed your issue. And you want someone to 'accept the blame' in order to be happy?

 

[Bateluer]

Check your phone for outtages? Contact a neighbor to see if they have service?

Also, start tracking how long its been out and how many times you called for support, useful information if you want a discount on your bill.

 

[PhoKingGuy]

Cox was actually pretty decent when I had them in Irvine, I had this exact same problem though. It took me two calls to get it solved, once where they replaced the modem and the second time where they redid the main lines to my apartment and thats what fixed it.

Their support was definitely american though which was pretty nice.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Not sure why you are frustrated. You had a problem, called someone.. got someone on the line.. they fixed your issue. And you want someone to 'accept the blame' in order to be happy?

"Frustrated" because I know the problem was not on my end and because in the past, even though I knew the problem was on their end and what the problem was, I never got anyone to say We're having a problem with such and such and should have service back up by <insert time>.

The tier one folks are probably clueless so, I guess my real frustration is with the folks who do know what's up but, don't feel the need to communicate it to users or tier one phone drones.

I would also like their extensive computerized phone "help" system to give you an estimate of how long it takes to reach a real person. I expect a communications company to communicate a little faster than 22 minutes. High expectations I know but, that's because I work in a service job.

Check your phone for outtages? Contact a neighbor to see if they have service?

Also, start tracking how long its been out and how many times you called for support, useful information if you want a discount on your bill.

We're the only folks in the neighborhood who use Cox for phone, internet and, tv.

 

[Ichinisan]

I work at an ISP. From my end, I can see more than you think. If you aren't running an open source firmware, it was probably your router.

I'm the guy who wastes your time to make sure you KNOW it was your router and that I'm not bullshitting you. I know the default internal IPs and passwords for most brands, so I usually have no problem getting a customer to log-in to their router and navigate to the status page...where it usually shows no IP address...until we reboot the router.

Some routers are stubborn. Yours probably is.

Does the ISP provide phone service, or do you use third-party VoIP like Vonage?

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

I work at an ISP. From my end, I can see more than you think. If you aren't running an open source firmware, it was probably your router.

I'm the guy who wastes your time to make sure you KNOW it was your router and that I'm not bullshitting you. I know the default internal IPs and passwords for most brands, so I usually have no problem getting a customer to log-in to their router and navigate to the status page...where it usually shows no IP address...until we reboot the router.

Some routers are stubborn. Yours probably is.

Does the ISP provide phone service, or do you use third-party VoIP like Vonage?

I did check my routers home page, I just lumped it in with "resetting my connection," all was fine. The ISP does provide phone service. We didn't know it was out too until we tried to call. Strangely, there was no problem with the tv service. I do have to say that problems have been pretty few. I just hate having to talk to phone call service centers.

 

[Ichinisan]

If the phone service is from your ISP and the MTA is built-in with the modem, your router probably was not at fault.

It was the ISP.

A tip:
Some EMTA devices (combination modem + MTA) have a BATTERY that makes it stubborn when you try to reset by unplugging the power cord. The phone rep probably just send a remote "reset" command to the modem.

If you try to reset the modem in the future, take out the battery too (or poke once at the reset hole on the back).