Cox has made it extremely difficult or impossible for some customers to maintain their current Internet speeds, despite promising that this will not force users to plans with slower uploads.
As we wrote two weeks ago, Cox informed customers with download speeds of 300 Mbps and uploads of 30 Mbps that they would switch to a plan with 500 Mbps downloads and 10 Mbps uploads on March 3. A Cox spokesman told Ars at the time that customers can stay on the plan with 30 Mbps uploads, as long as they upgrade to a DOCSIS 3.1 modem. But Cox’s email to his customers did not mention this option, and customers who called Cox’s customer service were told, in no uncertain terms, that they could not continue with their current plans.
Several California Cox users sent an email to Ars about the problem after reading our article, all with similar experiences.
“I just spoke on the phone with a Cox technical representative and she said my Ultimate Classic plan (300/30) is leaving, 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, he told Ars on Thursday last week. “When the time comes for March, my new plan will be the new Ultimate 500/10. I told her about her article and she said it is not what she is seeing in her system or hearing from her superiors.”
We contacted Cox about the problem on Friday last week, and a Cox spokesman admitted that the company failed to ensure that sales representatives knew that customers are allowed to stay on the 300 / 30Mbps plan.
“There are clearly some gaps that we need to address to avoid this confusion,” Cox told Ars on Monday. “We are in the process of retraining our frontline teams to ensure that they are consistently communicating the options available to affected customers, including maintaining the existing 300/30 plan as long as they update their modem.”
As before, customers will automatically switch from the 300 / 30Mbps plan to the 500 / 10Mbps level, unless they contact customer service and insist on maintaining the plan. The change in download and upload speeds will happen regardless of whether customers have an updated modem, but customers using an older modem may not get download speeds of 500 Mbps. Cox, who has about 5.3 million Internet customers in 19 states, says the changes are related to an update of the network.
Cox’s customer service mess
The evidence (including Cox’s email to customers and statements from Cox’s sales representatives to customers) makes it appear that Cox did not intend to allow customers to maintain their upload speeds of 30 Mbps until the company faced criticism and media exposure two weeks ago. This would explain why customer service representatives told customers that they should give up on the 300/30 Mbps plan and why Cox is now working hard to tell employees about the option.
However, a Cox spokesman told Ars that the company “always” intended to allow customers to maintain upload speeds of 30 Mbps. If this is true, then the company has totally messed up messages to customers and changing customer service systems.
Cox described the fix now being implemented as a “retraining” in a statement to Ars yesterday:
Our frontline service agents were originally trained in late January, before the first batch of customer communications in early February. Based on feedback from some customers, including those you shared, we are reviewing the training to ensure that ALL customers receive consistent and correct information. To this end, we are conducting an update training that will take place by the end of this week for all of our frontline employees.
As we retrain our employees, we ensure that they are communicating the options available to the affected customers, including staying on the existing Ultimate Classic plan (300/30), as long as they update their modem. Keeping this plan has always been an available option, although it was not communicated as clearly as it could have been. We want to make sure that customers clearly understand their options if they need more upload speed.
The 500 / 10Mbps plan is a direct replacement for the 300 / 30Mbps plan in terms of price and its place at Cox’s speed levels. It costs $ 80 per month for the first year and $ 100 after the end of the promotional period. With the 300 / 30Mbps plan being discontinued, the only option with upload speeds greater than 10Mbps is the “Gigablast” plan with download speeds of 940Mbps and upload speeds of 35Mbps. This plan typically costs $ 100 during the promotion period and $ 120 thereafter, but some customers have received a $ 92.50 promotional offer. Cox charges $ 12 a month for a combined modem and router, but customers can use their own compatible equipment to avoid the rental fee.
Cox’s email notifying users of upcoming changes in download and upload speeds said that customers who want upload speeds above 10 Mbps can “call to learn more about the equipment and our speed plans”, but not mentioned the option to remain on the same 300 / 30Mbps plan. Customers who received this email and those who contacted Cox before all customer service issues were resolved may still mistakenly believe that maintaining the plan is not an option. They would therefore have their upload speeds cut to 10 Mbps automatically when the change takes effect next week. We asked Cox if he is contacting all of these customers again to make it clear that they can avoid the cut in upload speed and will update this article if we receive a response.
Cox apparently struggled to provide announced upload speeds during the pandemic. In June 2020, we wrote about how Cox alerted some customers to “excessive” upload usage and how the company reduced upload speeds on the Gigablast plan from 35 Mbps to 10 Mbps in some entire neighborhoods where its network was having problems.