My best purchase of the year

[Brandon]

If this works.

http://item.mobileweb.ebay.com/viewitem?itemId=111142973405

[Bruce Nye]

My best is getting Direct TV.  Our Cox cable experience after a couple decades can only be described as inconsistent.  It got so I would see their blue/white trucks all over our neighborhood and the myriad excuses, which were 100% inaccurate, were too much.

 

Several neighbors switched as well and we are all very pleased with the change.

[gotbeer]

You going to be wearing it on Saturday?

[arch stanton]

Somewhere in my storage I have a once worn Anthony Davis t shirt from the home opener of the Southern California Sun of the WFL. I could probably get $5 for that.

[Vegas Halo Fan]

My best is getting Direct TV.  Our Cox cable experience after a couple decades can only be described as inconsistent.  It got so I would see their blue/white trucks all over our neighborhood and the myriad excuses, which were 100% inaccurate, were too much.

 

Several neighbors switched as well and we are all very pleased with the change.

 

I'm a former Cox customer as well. I still have internet service with them because there aren't any good options. Back when DirecTV was still adding local stations they didn't have ours. We got an offer from Cox for a lowball price for up to a year, which gave us local channels. We tried it out and immediately hated it. We called DirecTV about three days later about coming back. As it turned out DTV was adding our local channels that week, and they offered us the necessary equipment upgrades for free if we came back. My Cox equipment was back in their office within less than a week.

 

If I had never seen DirecTV, I might have been happy with Cox. As it was, I hated their service.

[Vernster52]

I've had Cox for almost 20 years.

 

I think it's too expensive (I pay $160 a month for cable, internet and phone) but am afraid of change.

[Brandon]

You going to be wearing it on Saturday?

What's Sunday?

[Eric]

I'm a former Cox customer as well. I still have internet service with them because there aren't any good options. Back when DirecTV was still adding local stations they didn't have ours. We got an offer from Cox for a lowball price for up to a year, which gave us local channels. We tried it out and immediately hated it. We called DirecTV about three days later about coming back. As it turned out DTV was adding our local channels that week, and they offered us the necessary equipment upgrades for free if we came back. My Cox equipment was back in their office within less than a week.

 

If I had never seen DirecTV, I might have been happy with Cox. As it was, I hated their service.

I switched to DirecTV from Cox and noticed something immediately and then again ayear or so later. Immediately I noticed the quality and variety of programming available, the picture was clearer, the sound crisper, and the choice vastly superior. I also liked the fact that I could watch non-network programs 3 hours earlier which meant that any program going live and promoting interaction with the audience via social media and email actually worked rather than the idea that it was all over by the time I sat down to watch the "live" broadcast. The thing I noticed much later was when I realized that I had gone from TV outages almost weekly to not having a single TV outage since switching. Internet, on the other hand, gave me two outages over the course of the year, as opposed to the almost weekly outages stated above. While the speed itself is just a bit slower, I prefer a solid, slightly reduced speed over a slightly faster spur ratio one. Besides, I'm not bittorrenting anything or moving a lot of bulk media files over the net, so the speed differential is minimal to me. My best friend and his wife work for Cox and he gives me grief all the time about using "the other service". I keep telling him, if Cox were to step up their game, I'd switch back tomorrow. But as it stands right now, I'll stick with the superior product.

[Vegas Halo Fan]

One thing I have noted about Cox internet service: If you have a wireless router, their customer service people are apparently trained to blame it for everything. Fortunately I have enough computer savvy that I rarely call them. One of their customer service reps also once told me that my cable modem was shot and that I needed to buy a new one (which I did) - only to find out later that there was a general service outage in my neighborhood. Fortunately the place where I bought the modem took it back for a full refund, even though I had opened the box. The modem that was supposedly fried is bringing this to you now, more than four years later.

[Eric]

Yeah, I think customer service is trained to keep asking question s until you say that you're using something not purchased through them, then they blame that product instead of their own.

Cox repeatedly pulled that "it's the router" thing. I only had one customer service call with them where the guy asked me which OS I was using. I responded by saying "which do you want me to use for this call? I have 3 versions of windows, 2 versions of Linux, and 2 versions of IOS I can use. You tell me which one to use." he replied by saying that if I have all that going on the same network then the problem had to be on their end because I obviously knew what I was doing and wouldn't waste my own time on a service call unless it was definitely their problem." It was.

Every other service person insisted they walk me through the modem cycling and router cycling first. Then a series of Windows troubleshooting, etc, wasting time actually looking for the problem instead choosing to look for ways to blame me for their own issues.

[Bruce Nye]

We still have Cox for internet service.  That seems to be tolerable.

[Vegas Halo Fan]

We still have Cox for internet service.  That seems to be tolerable.

 

They're fine, as long as you don't have to call them for anything.

[Vegas Halo Fan]

Every other service person insisted they walk me through the modem cycling and router cycling first. Then a series of Windows troubleshooting, etc, wasting time actually looking for the problem instead choosing to look for ways to blame me for their own issues.

 

This drives me nuts. I tell them that if rebooting the modem and/or the computer and/or the router would solve the problem, I wouldn't be calling. Some of them still insist that I follow their inflexible script, and I ask for a second level technician.

[Vegas Halo Fan]

Somewhere in my storage I have a once worn Anthony Davis t shirt from the home opener of the Southern California Sun of the WFL. I could probably get $5 for that.

 

You might be surprised. I am in a WFL e-mail group (former Jacksonville Sharks/Express season ticket holder, saw the SC Sun play). There is a decent market for WFL memorabilia.

[Eric]

This drives me nuts. I tell them that if rebooting the modem and/or the computer and/or the router would solve the problem, I wouldn't be calling. Some of them still insist that I follow their inflexible script, and I ask for a second level technician.

 

They do this because they give the call center operators a week long training session, but only about 3 hours of it is actual technical training. My friends wife, God Bless her, is a call center rep and knows jack squat about computers. A few weeks ago at a pool party for daughter, she asked me how my site was going. I told her that I was having a few issues and that the redirects were corrupted when they migrated my site. She asked me what a redirect was.  Yes, this is the same person that Cox connects you with to solve your internet connectivity issues.

[Vegas Halo Fan]

They do this because they give the call center operators a week long training session, but only about 3 hours of it is actual technical training. My friends wife, God Bless her, is a call center rep and knows jack squat about computers. A few weeks ago at a pool party for daughter, she asked me how my site was going. I told her that I was having a few issues and that the redirects were corrupted when they migrated my site. She asked me what a redirect was.  Yes, this is the same person that Cox connects you with to solve your internet connectivity issues.

 

On one call, from about the second sentence on I could tell that the rep I was talking to knew about as much about computers as my cat does. I asked to be transferred to someone else.