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Cox has been making it extremely difficult or impossible for some customers to stick with their current Internet speeds despite promising that it won’t force users onto plans with slower uploads.
As we wrote two weeks ago, Cox informed customers with 300Mbps download and 30Mbps upload speeds that they will be switched to a plan with 500Mbps downloads and 10Mbps uploads on March 3. A Cox spokesperson told Ars at the time that customers can stay on the plan with 30Mbps uploads as long as they upgrade to a DOCSIS 3.1 modem. But Cox’s email to its customers did not mention this option, and customers who called Cox customer service have since been told in no uncertain terms that they cannot stay on their current plans.
Several Cox users from California emailed Ars about the problem after reading our article, all with similar experiences.
“I just got off the phone with a Cox tech rep and she said that my current Ultimate Classic plan (300/30) is going away regardless of whether I upgrade to a DOCSIS 3.1 modem or not,” a customer whose first name is Dam and lives in Aliso Viejo, California, told Ars on Thursday last week. “When the time comes in March, my new plan will be the new Ultimate 500/10. I told her about your article and she said that is not what she’s seeing in her system or hearing from her higher-ups.”
We contacted Cox about the problem on Friday last week, and a Cox spokesperson admitted that the company failed to ensure that sales reps know customers are allowed to stay on the 300/30Mbps plan.
“There clearly are some gaps that we need to address to avoid this confusion,” Cox told Ars on Monday. “We’re in the process of retraining our frontline-facing teams to make sure they are consistently communicating the options available to impacted customers, including staying on their existing plan of 300/30 so long as they upgrade their modem.”
As before, customers will be automatically switched from the 300/30Mbps plan to the 500/10Mbps tier unless they contact customer service and insist on keeping their plan. The change to download and upload speeds will happen regardless of whether customers have an upgraded modem, but customers who stick with an older modem may not get the full 500Mbps download speeds. Cox, which has about 5.3 million Internet customers in 19 states, says the changes are related to a network upgrade.
Cox’s customer-service screwup
The evidence (including Cox’s email to customers and statements from Cox sales reps to customers) makes it seem as if Cox didn’t intend to let customers keep their 30Mbps upload speeds until the company faced criticism and media exposure two weeks ago. That would explain why customer-service reps have told customers they must give up the 300/30Mbps plan and why Cox is now scrambling to tell employees about the option.
However, a Cox spokesperson told Ars that the company “always” intended to let customers keep the 30Mbps upload speeds. If that is true, then the company totally screwed up its messaging to customers and the change to its customer-service systems.
lowered upload speeds on the Gigablast plan from 35Mbps to 10Mbps in some entire neighborhoods where its network was having trouble.
