Shanti’s Dispatches
Time waits for no man.
In retrospect, I may have been a little harsh on Cox Communications. That post was fired off right after they switched my connection back on, after a 24+ hour outage.
They are just in a really unfortunate business at the moment — a commodity one.
If you still have a landline, do you ever pick up your phone and think, “Man, this dialtone sure is killer” or “I can’t believe how quickly Qwest puts through my calls, they must have some really fast operators plugging those cables into the right boxes to connect me!” or “This voicemail system sure is DA BOMB!”
No, chances are you don’t because it’s become a commodity, same as cable Internet.
You just want a big fat pipe out to the Internet that works 99.999% of the time.
You don’t care if it’s over cable wires of phone wires, fiber or power lines, so long as it Just Works and is Fast Enough (or more).
Irate Cox Communications Comment #1
Thank goodness somebody has had the same experience as me. I had internet completely out (and I pay for “premiere” 12mb/s service) for 2h one day and 1h the next day and sat through their assanine voice prompt system and I had not only known but seen and spoke to the flippin Cox people while they were out at my building and asked them what they were doing and they told me they were upgrading equipment - hence I was almost positive the issue was with the equipment they just replaced. I complained via phone and email and gave them a bill of my time, wasted trying to get them to send out a technician to check their NETWORK and not my setup, which has never failed me since I set it up 3 years ago when moving to my current location. I kept getting the same responses, “it was internet rush hour”, “you have wife at home so its slowing your network”, “you are using a splitter” (um, excuse me, but how the &**% can one get internet and tv over the single cable that Cox places into our homes without a splitter and since when does a splitter reduce a 12mb/s connection to basically zero?). After being irate, they agreed to send a technician to MY PLACE. So I had to be home during the window. I told the guy on the phone that I would be happy to have the technician come see my lovely home, but they better send them to their boxes to check their network because I was 99.999% positive the issue was on their side. The technician came and told me the problem was my flippin splitter. I told him Cox had installed it and it wasn’t the problem. Before he could bullshit anymore, he got a call on his cell phone and he hung up and told me they had located the real problem - the new equipment they had installed which served a 15 BLOCK AREA down town was missing a filter and so the signal strength was too high and was cutting out people’s modems. I got back to *&^ COX and told them they at least owed me a special thank you if not to pay me the several hours I spent with their assanine techs for resolving a network issue that was THEIRS. Well, they credited me 4 (four) flippin dollars. Thanks to my ranting and complaining and bitching, 15 city blocks had their internet restored/improved and I got $4 and not even a thank you.
What’s worse, the reason I found this blog is because I am once again pissed off that my 12mb/s connection (which usually measures up to 15mb/s) was crawling and almost dead for 1h. Internet rush hour? Screw you cox.
Irate Cox Communications Comment #2 (same guy)
Apparently he/she feels similarly, that the voice-automated Cox Communications troubleshooting “lady” is a “skanky ass whore.”
Oh and I forgot to add - screw that automated bitch. You cannot even hit 000000 to get a bloody human. For hesus’ sake, all I wanted to do was to ask a bloke if they were experiencing known network issues, but I had to sit with the bitch for like an hour doing all the unplugging and this and that before they transferred me. I kept getting “I can see your modem on the network but I didn’t get the right response from your modem, let’s try again”. Of course not bitch, the Internet is down. Duh you skanky ass whore. Sorry, sorry. Appologies.
Lol - I feel your pain, I do feel your pain.
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The reason I was irate was because I was:
1. Trying to get a human being to simply ask if there was a known outage but had to spend 1h cycling through their “troubleshooting” before I got transferred to a human (it took that long because the network speed was degraded down to a few bytes/sec and so it was taking ages for my modem to respond to their system and the response was not proper, so they kept repeating it). And then I spent the same amount of time the next day before I got a human again and more time with the humans until I got their adequate attention to the issue. This is completely annoying, especially when trying to work from home. Good customer service means that you can reach a human immediately.
2. The problem was 100% an installation/technical error on COX’s behalf. They forgot to install filters at one of their main NODES and thus screwed a huge coverage area. I could not convince them to check their new equipment, until after 2 days of problems, countless calls, a “visit” from the “technician” and a total waste of my time. And thank all the gods and deity’s in the heavens that I saw the COX truck outside my window and went to chat with them and so I knew they were working on a node. They had an installation error at a NODE. A NODE for heaven’s sake. The customer should not be trouble shooting COX’s network, that’s their job. Also I expect some very basic quality control or a proper instruction sheet - especially when fooling around on a NODE that serves a 15-block area of downtown - so that the installers do not fry people’s modems in the future. At the minimum, I expected some gratitude as I did them a huge service.
3. You may argue that the internet is a “commodity” - but that does not take away the responsiblities of providers to provide the services they promise, especially when they run in a monopolistic environment without competition. I pay COX over $100/mo for my bundled services. Last I remember this is a large sum of money that I work hard to earn. COX promises and advertises 99.99% uptime as well as a consistent 12mb/s and I expect them to keep this promise. I hold all the utilities that I pay for up to the highest possible standards, because they claim to hold themselves up to such lofty standards. Think of “electricity”, if you claim this is a commodity, think that none of us would be happy if our electric connection was cut off or “reduced” during “rush hour” on a daily basis. If cable internet is a commodity, then it should be as stable as the electric connection.
Unfortunately, there is no competition in this country when it comes to cable internet services and the US is in last place when it comes to price for broadband, speed, and availability when compared to other OECD countries - purely on the basis that there is no competition. Please read this article:
http://www.freepress.net/news/21073
So, yes, I am irate that I pay the highest broadband rates in the world, get the slowest speeds, have no other choice than what is available, and that the only way those idiots discovered they had a problem at the NODE was because I just happened to spot a COX truck and was interested in speaking to them on one fine sunny day and thus used my amazing trouble-shooting skills and powers of deductive reasoning
Pissed Off - you have every right to be pissed off and irate.
My only point was that they are in a really tough spot. I’ve worked on webapps before and even delivering 99% uptime, let alone 99.9% uptime can be really really hard.
Still, COX is basically a monopoly and like most big companies has some majors customer service issues to sort out.
I work as tech support for Cox phoenix. Just a hint for everyone, if you do not talk to the automated system you will not sit for more than 60 seconds. And as much as you may all hate the “computer lady” she does help ALOT of our customers and she takes ALOT of strain off of us in tech support making it so much easier for us to get to our calls. I can understand that you are angry but we are doing the best we can in the tech support area. We can only do so much. We HAVE to follow policy. I spend more time everyday explaining to customers that I need the last 4 of their social to be able to access their accounts than I do actually fixing their issues. Yes some (most) of our field techs are not suited for this line of work, but that is not my fault. We get yelled at more times in one day than you can imagine. As far as running a business from home, GET A BUSINESS ACCOUNT! With a business account you will have a tech out that day! I know the frequent outages and the “ongoing issues” are a major inconvenience. Trust me I know this. I also know that it seems pointless to have to be home for a tech to come out, we have to have you home when we send a tech out because the tech is supposed to verify their work. If the tech does not verify their work I would suggest you call us so that we can have that taken care of. Basically what I want to say is please when you call tech support don’t yell at us it just makes it harder on everyone. We cannot help you when you are screaming at us. I personally will not try to speak over a customer. If you need to rant fine call billing and rant. Tech support is not a stress relief line. We are there for one purpose and that is to help YOU. I go out of my way day in and day out to make my customers happy. Tonight we had a huge outage in Phoenix. I spent more time saying please calm down then I did actually figuring out why I had the customer on the line. Give us techs a break, we did not go to your home and cut your lines or turn you off. We are strictly office only. Remember we are people just like you and we are working for MINIMUM WAGE. So please be patient with us. And don’t forget, quit talking to the “computer lady”. We have some (alot) of bugs to work out of the system still. Hopefully soon we can get this accomplished. We are just as frusterated and pissed as you are with most of this. Hope all your internet filled days are pleasant.
Tech Support Girl
KUDOS to “Tech Support Girl” !
I feel your pain … and I’m an upset customer. Got here by GOOGLE. I thought maybe I could find out what’s up, since none of the techs want to tell me.
Since you’re anonymous, Tech Support Girl, can you tell us exactly what’s going on behind the curtain? (Remember Wizard of Oz, and: “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”)
… did someone with a backhoe cut a fiber backbone somewhere? Did some crazed tech at COX “go postal” and fire some bullets through some servers? Are we under massive DOS attacks from the Chinese or Russians?
Might be useful in our managing our stress, if we had a better sense of what’s going on behind COX’s curtains.
Right now with this outage in Phoenix we on the phones HAVE NO CLUE as to what is causing it. We do know that we have techs in the field but that is all the wonderful (sarcasm) higher ups will tell us. I am at work right now and we still have no updates. We don’t have an estimated time of repair or anything. I wish I could tell you guys some more but I don’t have any information. BTW I have to keep my identity a secret because I am not willing to take the chance of losing my job. I am willing to let you guys know what I know but I cannot tell you who or where I am. If you wanna know something just ask me! I am here to help out the best I can, without you guys there is no us.
Tonight I will set up a yahoo account so that anyone with questions can reach me. That is the best I can do for you guys for right now. As I know more I will inform you guys. And a quick test to see if you are in the outage is try to go to http://www.purple.com then try http://www.nasa.gov if you can get to purple but not nasa then you are indeed in the outage that is eating away at Phoenix. If not, call us. Please be kind though we are just as in the dark as you guys are. We will tell you what we know though! Who knows maybe you will get me, LOL. Gotta run boss is out and about.
http://techsupportgirl.blog.com/1985672/ is where you can view more and contact me.
I had cox service five years ago, then cancelled and had my my mail forwarded to my grandmother’s house at “General Delivery” in some small town in Texas.
That means that the postman there, who serves 450 people, from a shack the size of my garage, has to know you when you come to pick up your mail.
Two weeks ago, I ordered new service via the cox website and scheduled an installation date during the process. I specified in the comment section while ordering that my telephone was with Vonage, which used to run through my DSL, now disconnected, and that I would be unreachable by telephone at my home. That is, until they came to install their internet service.
So, the day after what I had thought was the scheduled date, I received a voicemail from cox saying that they were calling to reschedule me because I had been foolish enough to have scheduled my installation using their website. Of course, they worded it a little differently; but the message was the same.
The lady from Cox reviewed my order to the voicemail and told me my new date and that if I needed to change anything then I should call. In my book, that would be a missed appointment on their part with an apology in order, but they probably just count that as not having been scheduled in the first place. Fine… as long as they actually do show up on the new date.
Also, note the syntax: “IF I should need to change anything, THEN I should call”. Nothing in that says that I MUST call.
Two days later, near the end of my scheduled installation window, 1:00pm to 3:00pm, a technician parks in front of my house and informs me that he had been trying to call me for for an hour to confirm the appointment but decided to show up anyway just so he could honestly say that he was there and I was not.
“The paper says to reschedule because they could not confirm by phone,” he said. “Do you want to reschedule?”
“No. Actually I don’t. That’s why I’ve been waiting here,” I replied.
“Oh. Well, I’ve been trying to call you for an hour.”
“My phone is with Vonage; and I don’t have internet here at the house.”
“You don’t have internet?”
“No. That’s why you’re here… to install the internet.”
“Oh.”
Now, I don’t mean to pick on him too much. It was late in the day and I’m sure he loses track when he gets tired. I just thought that was funny. So, I included it here.
Well, this guy was very competant and got me up and running in no time. No complaints there.
But a week later, I was called from some small town in Texas by a relative who had received my Cox bill.
Remember, on the website they ask you if your mailing address is different from your service address. I checked the box indicating that it was not different.
That does not mean, “Oh, go ahead and mail it to some small town in Texas.” If it does, then they should at least include a disclaimer.
So, I called Cox to change the mailing address and got the dreaded “CyBot Lady”; and it took me several calls, about ten minutes total, to figure out the correct verbiage to
get me to a live person.
The lady who answered had a foreign accent and I was pissed off because I thought I got transferred to India or Pakistan. She finally convinced me that she was Filipino and did indeed live in Las Vegas.
She promptly corrected the mailing address error and promised to send a duplicate bill. However, she told me to expect that the next bill will probably also go to some small town in Texas because their system requires at least thirty days to make a change.
I’m beginning to think that Cox Communications was nationalized at some point by the US Government and is actually being run by the IRS.
What do you think?