Another storm - power restored quickly still no internet
I live in Ocala Florida in an area where Cox has a monopoly on internet service. So another hurricane went through south of us and the winds were strong here so of course the power went out 2AM on Thursday morning. I was already having problems though because it had been raining all day and whenever it rains, the internet starts failing. I reset it several times after first having a reset through Cox. I had intermittent service sometimes as low as .16 mbps. Oddly, the upload speed stayed about the same as usual – around 30 mbps. Eventually it went out altogether Wednesday night.
The power was restored Friday morning. But still no internet. And of course Cox customer service can't be bothered with us. Now all I get is that there is an "unplanned event" when I check the website. I signed up for texts to get updates, but just like when the internet went out when Hurricane Helene hit the state (which did minimal damage in our area BTW), I haven’t received one text message and can’t get through to anyone with Customer Service. A recorded voice says because of the service disruption there’s nothing they can help with. And like last time, I’ve seen no Cox trucks and neither have my neighbors.
How much easier it would be if Cox treated us like we were important and I don't mean the patronizing lip service that they've taught their CS agents to throw at us because I don't want to be reminded that I've been their customer for 2 decades. Even the small power company that serves our area goes to the trouble of providing a map showing us all of the outages in the city and we can see in real time that they're working and restoring power. They even show when a crew has been assigned and is working in our neighborhood. But you know what Cox does? Unplanned Event! We see that a network issue has been identified in your area that may be causing intermittent service interruptions. So just go away and stop bothering us. We'll get to you when we feel like it. Meanwhile make sure you pay our bill on time!
The internet is no longer just a fun activity to be used for our leisure time. Much of our lives are now dependent on it for work, for speaking with friends and family, for paying bills, for taking care of our personal business, even for doctor visits. Yet Cox does not take that seriously and maybe they don't even care about anything other than getting as much money from us as they can. I'm watching the orange light flashing so probably no help is coming today either and with it being the weekend maybe not tomorrow either. Sure, Ocala was pretty hard hit in the storm, but power has been restored to most of our area. Cox is a utility company that is not providing competent service to its customers. Why don't they have a plan in place to restore service quickly during a big event like a hurricane? Likely because it just doesn't seem like much of an emergency to them.
