Cox Cable
The customer service I've gotten from these folks is bar-none the worse I've ever experienced. It was so bad that I would never do business with them again. Even if satellite TV and DSL were significantly more expensive than their cable TV and cablemodem I would would still refuse to become a Cox customer again.
A few basic complaints before getting into the real problems:
- First off, there's the service itself. Every few weeks the signal would be interrupted
while I was trying to watch/tape something. The outage might only last 5-15 minutes, but
that's still more than anything I've experienced since moving to satellite. And given how
little TV I watched, if I was seeing that many there's no telling how many occurred when I
didn't have it turned on.
- Then there's the pricing. While you must accept that the cost of living goes up, the
rate increases we got for cable were well above the average rate of inflation. Living in a
medium size town, with only one network station and one PBS station readily available with a
traditional antenna, the local cable affiliate has always had a monopoly since if anyone
wanted a full range of channels they had to get cable. Past franchise holders had taken
advantage of this as well, but rates seemed to go up faster and higher under Cox than under
previous companies.
- Channel selection was quickly becoming a problem as well. Despite Cox's claim that they
were bringing more channels to it's viewers, the number of quality stations plummeted.
Several high quality independent stations were removed, most of the time to be replaced with
home shopping channels or something equally unappealing. There was no UPN or WB station at
all, though the FOX affiliate that was carried did show limited programming from both of
those networks late nights. When that station was bought out by Univision, however, Cox
never bothered finding a replacement for UPN or WB (though one of the other affiliate
stations did begin carrying WB late nights soon thereafter.) This being a college town,
you'd have thought just the number of complaints they must have received about not having
Star Trek available would have motivated them to find a replacement, but after a year
now it seems unlikely.
OK, enough with general complaints. I could have lived with these problems with only mild grumbling, but the problems I experienced while moving to my new house accounted for by far the worse customer service I've ever encountered.
I went to their office to set up a time to have cable hooked up at the new house and disconnected from the apartment. I was told that the connection could be made the next Monday and the disconnect could then be made the following day. So far so good, or so I thought. When I get home from work that Monday there was a note on the door from Cox saying they couldn't hook up the cable. After calling the office to find out why, I was told that somebody had to have been home for them to give permission to come onto the property. (If you remember I didn't mention being told in the office that somebody had to be there, that's because I wasn't told!) Further, not only would they not come back that day to install it, but I would have to wait until Thursday, and that I couldn't even get a definite time, "it'll either be between 8 and 12 or between 1 and 5." Given that, I told them to at least not shut off cable to the appartment until after it was connected to the house. "No problem" they said. Hah!
So Tuesday night I'm at the appartment having a moving out party, when all of a sudden the cable goes dead right in the middle of the movie. So much for "no problem."
So Thursday cable is to be installed at the house, by now I've at least been told it'll be between 8 and 12, so I take the morning off on vacation. Noon rolls around and I'm getting anxious so walk out to the mailbox. On the way back I spot another one of those Cox stickers... on my neighbor's door. They had come by at 8:30, but had gone to the wrong house! One more phone call to the office, and I'm assured that they'd be out again by 5:00. I should have just hung up and canceled service right there, but I went along with it and said OK, calling in to work to take the rest of the day off.
Just when I thought everything had settled down, I got the bill. Actually two of them. Well, to be more precise, three. Despite having disconnected the apartment cable, I got a bill for the next month of service there. I was also billed for two months of service at the house instead of just one. After talking to several people and hearing an equal number of silly excuses I finally talked to the customer services manager who agreed that they had overbilled, but who still insisted that it was an innocent mistake. An innocent mistake perhaps, but as we shall see one that happens quite regularly.
Thinks went fine for the next few weeks, until the local TV station that carried UPN and WB programming was bought out and converted to Univision, a Spanish speaking station which was already being carried on another channel. Cox did stop showing them, but after a month they never did get a replacement for either UPN or WB. Now keep in mind that this is a college town, and that these are the probably the two most popular networks for viewers here. Despite city-wide complaints, Cox finally released a statement that they had no plans to find replacements for either (another local station has since picked up WB broadcasting, but as of now UPN is still unavailable.) This was the last straw for me, and I canceled my cable service altogether and subscribed to Dish Network over satellite. As it turned out, my mistake was in telling Cox why I was cancelling my service.
Despite my cancellation order, Cox continued to send bills for their service, as if I was still subscribed. Their first excuse was that "the bills were already in the mail" when I discontinued service, but that fell apart when I pointed out to them that would explain one extra month of bills, not two. It would also not explain why they demanded payment of those bills and even threatened to affect my credit rating if they were not payed. After the first month I had even insisted that they come out and completely disconnect my house from the cable system and remove the wire from my yard. So there should be no doubt that I was not a customer by that time. Only more conversations with the customer service manager, and threats of complaints to the Better Business Bureau and other cable regulatory organizations prompted them to agree that I didn't need to pay these extra bills.
As a nice twist at the end, another person I know from work canceled his account the exact same day, but didn't tell them it was because he was migrating to satellite... and he never had any of the problems I had. No extra bills, no harassment, no anything. Just a coincidence? You decide...