Cox Degrades Signals and Prohibits Cable Box Resets

As soon as Cox went from analog to digital the degradation of reception has steadily gotten worse while they continue to up prices by 8 - 12% per year - supposedly "upgrading" their "infrastructure".

SYMPTOMS:

1. Black screen, no audio with a displayable info bar.  This went from occasional on one channel to this year multiple channels every night for hours at a time.
2. MPEG macro-blocking with audio drop out.  Again initially once in a while, now multiple channels for hours at a time EVERY night.  Typically it is 5 sec of audio and video, followed by 30 seconds of macro blocking or picture freeze and no audio repeated for hours on end.
3. Tune to a channel, get 20 - 30 seconds of black before they re-route you to a non-HD channel which takes another 10 seconds to display.
4. The instantaneous freeze with no audio that can only be corrected by switching channels.
5. The usual fix - going to your online account to reset your cable box - still appears in the account.  For the past several months they would not allow it after reporting the network was working fine.  You select to reset and it denies you saying there IS a network outage they will fix in 12 hours.  This past week they simply report "There was a problem and we could not reset your cable box. Try again later" but it NEVER works.  I believe they have actually disabled this capability of your account and just won't tell consumers they have done it.
6. Charge you for services they deny you access to.  I am being charged for HBO Max, something that should come from my HBO subscription through COX but I can't access it unless I pony up an additional $29 a month for a DVR box.  My smart TV would support it through network / internet connection, but I would have to pay HBO directly for it because they say,unlike the old HBO Go I must get it through COX if I want to get it as part of my subscription.
7. They regularly take the entire cable sometimes including internet service offline for hours at a time for "upgrades" which make no changes to the crappy signal quality, bogged down internet connections and glitchiness.

Yes, this "improved service" is why our cable bill doubled in 5 years.  COX - say it out loud - its all in the name!