[Audio] Cox Communications Lies

Listen to this post instead:

Cox Communications Lies Audio Post

On June 25th I put together a lengthy writeup looking at Cox Communication’s misleading advertising campaign and sharing general information that the average consumer might not have access to or be able to locate.

You can view that post here.

Today, after suffering through a number of slow loading videos across a number of sites I decided to call in in the hope that I’d learn something useful. Unfortunatly, I learned what I already knew.  That Cox and its agents have no problem what so ever lying to their customers. That, or the level of gross incompetence/lack of internal communication is astonishing.

The one piece of potentially interesting information comes from the Tier 2 Tech’s explanation of the way that Cox handles their bandwidth consumption caps. The catch is, that since his credibility is suspect (high chance he lied to me about a 100% unfiltered network) this information is suspect.

I’ve taken the most relevant 4:27 seconds of Audio out of my 30 minute call and compiled it.  The following audio sequence contains 3 separate clips combined in chronological order.  I apologize for not making the transitions more defined/smoother between the 3.

Listen:

Cox Communications Lies

You’ll note that the Tier 1 Tech, who was very friendly readily admits that Cox does employ P2P filtering Technology. A statement supported by experience, that I and others have confirmed with other Tech Support people within the company, and shown to be accurate by research.  One example of which I noted in my previous article.  To revisit the information ArsTechnica reported:

Of the nine ISPs in the US found to block BitTorrent, Comcast and Cox were far and away the most aggressive. Both blocked more than half of all attempted BitTorrent tests on their networks (82 of 151 tests on Cox were blocked, while 491 of 788 tests on Comcast met the same fate).

Additionally, there is a significant amount of data from other major sources confirming these figures, which if you’re curious I encourage you to research independently.

Now contrast that to the statements made by the Tier 2 Tech. An individual with significantly more technical knowledge and access to Cox’s system.  Further, consider his statements that he has NEVER had any performance complaints similar to mine and that he’s unfamiliar with any information similar to that which I just posted. Keep in mind that Cox has the cable monopoly on a majority of the greater Phoenix Area. Home to a thriving high tech industry, companies like GoDaddy, Google, Flypaper and Ipowerweb, several technical/game design institutes and one of the largest Universities in the U.S. – Anyone want to take bets on how many of those people value a decent connection?

Thoughts, feedback, personal experiences? Post them in a comment.

I am a travel blogger and photographer. I also am involved in academic research into the study abroad and backpacker communities.

2 Comments

  1. I had an interesting experience with a Tier 1 customer service rep. I called and asked why they were throttling peer to peer networking and her response was, “what is peer to peer networking?” I thought she was joking at first, but no. She had to go ask someone. After waiting on hold for a while she finally came back and said “we arent really familiar with that here but my supervisor told me that we definitely do not throttle peer to peer networking. if you have any more questions you can call the public relations department.”
    I did call the PR dept. but they were not at all anxious to return the call. I never heard from them again… well not until recently when my bill was overdue, anyway.

    I wrote about comcast on the same subject on my site. check it out.

  2. I had an interesting experience with a Tier 1 customer service rep. I called and asked why they were throttling peer to peer networking and her response was, “what is peer to peer networking?” I thought she was joking at first, but no. She had to go ask someone. After waiting on hold for a while she finally came back and said “we arent really familiar with that here but my supervisor told me that we definitely do not throttle peer to peer networking. if you have any more questions you can call the public relations department.”
    I did call the PR dept. but they were not at all anxious to return the call. I never heard from them again… well not until recently when my bill was overdue, anyway.

    I wrote about comcast on the same subject on my site. check it out.

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