TL;DR: if you're an Internet provider, you really gotta have your diagnostic and escalation procedures established and available. Otherwise people will say "you suck".
Above is my connectivity since this morning (normal speed is 50Mbps down with ping in low teens). At this speed, *nothing* works. That is, unless you're willing to stare at the screen for a few minutes. No matter which SpeedTest server I go to, I get the same speed. Looks like throttling.
Home network is fine. According to Cox reps, account is in good standing, and no throttling is activated.
Calling Cox. After 30 minutes on hold, "We gotta make sure your cable modem is connected directly to the computer". Really? In 2014? When it is next to impossible to find a house *without* WiFi? When it is well known that connecting a Windows computer directly to Internet is a bad idea?
Long story short, four Cox reps I was talking to
- made me reboot equipment multiple times (each of them);
- failed to realize that the previous person has gone through the "standard process" already;
- failed to understand and/or acknowledge that the problem can't be resolved by the book (for the simple reason it is *not* in the book);
- failed to offer me a way to confirm or deny the assertion that the problem is somewhere in Cox network;
- failed to offer a reasonable way to escalate the problem (one guy just lied to me that he will connect me level 2 support, and simply dumped me onto the next rep from the pool (after fiddling with my equipment for several minutes while keeping me on hold).
As a result, I've spent 90 minutes on hold and talking, with the ultimate solution offered being a service visit.
...on Saturday.
I was about to say that I can't wait until Google Fiber gets here, but then remembered that their customer service is even worse.
UPDATE (6 hours later): It gets worse by the hour:
My only hope is that I'm not the only affected and that either other people will finally notice, or whatever is causing this will finally collapse and cause an outage that *can* be reported and fixed "by the book".
UPDATE (8 hours later): It's still crumbling down, hopefully it'll go beyond the pale and back by the morning:
...but now I have to spend more time on hold to *cancel* that service appointment.
UPDATE (6 hours later): It gets worse by the hour:
My only hope is that I'm not the only affected and that either other people will finally notice, or whatever is causing this will finally collapse and cause an outage that *can* be reported and fixed "by the book".
UPDATE (8 hours later): It's still crumbling down, hopefully it'll go beyond the pale and back by the morning:
And when the sun came back
...but now I have to spend more time on hold to *cancel* that service appointment.
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