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: 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. 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. 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. The instantaneous freeze with no audio that can only be corrected by switching channels. 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. 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. 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!
DVR not working; cnF9 error
My DVR box (Cisco 8742HDC) stopped working around 1230 PM. I checked the cables (use a splitter with my panoramic wifi modem) and tried to reset it from the COX website, but received the "unable to reset receiver, try again in a few minutes" message. I tried again about ten minutes later, no change. I unplugged the power source from the box, waited two minutes then plugged it back in. It cycled through to the "Welcome to COX" screen but never actually made it to the program guide. After trying this a third time, my areahad a thunderstormwhich caused apower outage for about an hour. Once it returned, the box went through the usual boot up process, but now is frozen with the "Welcome to COX. We're loading the Interactive Program Guide" screen and the front of the box reads the "cnF9" error code(or config as I have seen in other posts). It has been like this for the past2 hours and still has not returned. Every once in a while the "Please wait" blue dots that form a circle will move, as if to show progress. I have had this box about four months after having the previousmodel for four years. That box "died" after having a similar issue where it would not record and then it froze on the DVR recordings screen. I lost all my recordings that time and am mentally prepared to lose the recordings on this DVR again. Is it time for another box?
ALL Cox Channels Have DISAPPEARED!!
Turn on the cable box and all you see is COX and five blocks through which a blue block keeps cycling, then an "Info" banner that says the signal is "temporarily unavailable - watch another channel" except ALL the channels say the same thing. Try to reset the cable box and of course COX says, "Outage in you area. We will fix it as soon as we can". But its going into the second day. Off course, being an unregulated government sanctioned monopoly, NO CREDIT FOR DAYS OF LOST SERVICE will be offered AND NO RUSH TO FIX IT WILL BE MADE. Twice in the last two months we were told of a planned outage to upgrade the system so we would have oh, so much better service (even though it is still worse, more unreliable, more intermittent than in the days of analog service in the 80's and 90's). Once by email, it would happen on July 6, they said. WRONG! On July 8, they email to say the wonderful update was done, and oh how lucky we are to NOW have such great reliable service. WRONG - NEVER HAPPENED! Then by door hanger on July 27. WRONG - NEVER HAPPENED! So is this >24 hour outage supposed to be the 6-hour outage that never happened? I doubt it! IT IS JUST A CONTINUED ABUSE OF CUSTOMERS SUBJECTED TO A GOVERNMENT GRANTED TV AND INTERNET MONOPOLY IN AN AREA WHERE THERE IS NO OTA CAPABILITY, AND COX HAS "CONVINCED" LOCAL OFFICIALS TO DENY PERMITS FOR COMPETITORS WHO WANTED TO RUN FIBRE-OPTIC FOR COMPETING SERVICES. "COX" - say it out loud - its all in the name.
Horrible service for over a month!
Come on cox get it together! It’s been over a month of just absolute horrible service! The sound keeps cutting in and out and the shows freeze! I’ll be super interested in a show and just at a part that I’ve been waiting to hear the sound cuts out ugh! I’ll try to rewind and it won’t rewind and just go back to live making me completely miss the part in the show I needed to see or hear! Also then I can’t rewind at all when I should be able to! It’s also pathetic cox only lets u rewind less than thirty minutes when direct tv lets u rewind four hours back if u wanted as long as u have been on that channel for that long! And u can only pause the tv for like five minutes before it kicks u off! Cox has gone completely downhill and we completely regret going back to cox! I wish the sales guy for cox would have never talked my dad into getting us to use cox again! The only good thing I like is the voice button to speak what u want to watch other than that it’s ** and I’m getting so tired of not getting to watch a full episode without something going wrong during it! I have to go watch my Netflix if I want to watch something without sound issues or the show freezing ugh! I know I’m repeating myself but u have no idea how frustrating it is to miss parts in a show and every show! We even had a couple techs out to our house and they don’t fix anything and then this last one couldn’t even come inside like seriously what’s the point of sending out a tech guy if he can’t come in and try to help us with this horrible service! Ridiculous cox just ridiculous!
Automatic equipment upgrades/Cox Customer Service is TERRIBLE
I subscribed to Contour TV Ultimate - 4 Premiums & Record 6 250+ channels 2 1/2 years ago, however Cox has added features since then and I still have my old equipment. Why does Cox not setup legacy customers who are subscribed to high end services for automatic equipment upgrades, or at least make some kind of effort to make sure current customers get the same type of equipment that new subscribers to the same service. This is not limited to Contour TV but, I'm subscribed to the highest internet speed Cox offers and I pay for the premium modem yet I don't have the newest equipment. I have asked this question several times through chat, phone and personal conversations with Cox CS representative's and technicians without receiving a clear answer. Unfortunately we don't have a choice between cable companies, we are stuck with whatever provider services the area you live in, which in my opinion the FCC/Government should step in and change this awful situation. I moved from a Bright House serviced area to a Cox serviced area, had I had the option to transfer and stay with Bright House verses switching to Cox I would have definitely stay with Bright House (Now Spectrum). I absolutely hate Cox, again unfortunately I'm forced to use them because i prefer high speed cable internet over any other options!