 Review by bskuared 
UPDATED: 1.9 years ago
member for 7.9 years, 3473 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 San Clemente,Orange,CA
 $56 per month
 "Continuous good speeds at the Premier Level"
 "Calling/emailing customer service still takes eons. Sit back read a book - they will answer some year."
 "Costs seem to escalate - I'll be comparing other services soon"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Well, I'm in Orange County, California and the switch from @home to Cox HSI has been completed in my area. Had a few false starts and trouble with DNS, but I haven't been down since the switchover - and that's an amazing accomplishment!
My speeds are picking up and are running close to 2700 down and 200 up - Cox publishes a cap at 3000 down and 250 up - so I guess mine are in the normal range. I'm not a gamer so I don't have other issues.
All in all I would recommend. Cox offers good discount packages if you have telephone, tv and internet - right now my cable modem is free!
I will continue to update this as things settle in.
Well, so now I decide to move a couple of miles down the street - here is what happened:
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UPDATE 1)
I recently moved from Dana Point, CA to San Clemente, CA. Prior to my move I called Cox to do 3 things - transfer my cox telephone, internet and television to my new address. I thought you should know of my experience and why I am so unhappy.
First, the technician showed up on the day before my move to disconnect my old service. Sound ok? Well,not really, he showed up at the NEW address. I called Cox and reconfirmed/straightened out the arrival of a technician the day AFTER my move at the NEW address.
The technician showed up. First he hooked up the HSI - the only thing wrong is that my child email addresses failed to transfer over. (Even though when I made the appointment for the transfer I specifically asked if this was going to be a problem - I was assured it would not be). Then the technician told me he couldn't help me with that and I had to call customer support. He gave me an 800 number to call. It was an incorrect number for this kind of customer service.
After getting the correct number to call, the first tech said he could see them (the child accounts) but had to have them reset and his supervisor would have to do it. He took my number and said he would call me back.
Four hours later... no call back.
I called again. One more time through the ringer with tech support answering all the questions. Transferred to the supervisor who couldn't help me and would have to call me back. Believe it or not he did and told me all was fixed. But, when I tried to login in - no child accounts existed. He asked to call me back again. Two more times he tried to fix it. The last time he called - I missed the call and he said all child accounts where active and left me the new password.
Come to find out, the child accounts work but now my main account isn't working. I call Rex back at the number he gave me. No one can find him. Twenty minutes goes by... I finally hang up.
I call tech support again, this time the tech says that my main account has been deleted. So now I have child accounts and no main account. I'm put on hold again. Finally they come back and say that one of my child accounts has now been made into my main account name. I settle for this.
Meanwhile my cell phone bill is going to be astronomical.
Similar goof ups have occurred on installation coordination for telephone and television. This is something that could seriously sour any new customer.
On the good side, my speeds are faster than EVER here at the new address - over 3000 down and pushing 300 up. Can't complain about that 
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UPDATE 2)
Well, things are going well. Speeds are still running very fast at over 3000 down and 300 up. I am not experiencing any down time and so far only 3 pieces of spam in my email.
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UPDATE 3)
Cox still has incredibly slow customer service. A service call request to the house is still never less than a week away. Recently my IP lease went down to every hour for a week. Today it's back to every 24 hours.
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UPDATE 4)
I'm not sure what happened but my speed is up over 3000!!! and always seems to be close to 300 up. Can't complain one bit and every since the little blip with my IP lease going down every hour... I am back to a 24 hour lease. All in all , if you live in my area I would recommend Cox HSI.
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UPDATE 5)
Still consistently up over 3000 with little packet loss. And, I just love the full month credit I got for referring my neighbor for service. I'd like to see a dial-up option for when I travel - but I sure don't want to pay more!
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UPDATE 6.... it's now 2003 and things remain the same. GREAT! No complaints here. Speed/upload is consistently good - service is reliable, packet loss is minimal. I just wish they had better customer service and speedier scheduling of service calls.
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UPDATE 7: December 2007
I'm still not impressed with Cox Customer service when I have to call them. This doesn't happen very often, but when it does I settle in with some munchies and soda because I know I'll be on the phone forever wading through the automated system. Yuck. Thank goodness for BBR so I can get my questions answered quickly.
I recently upgraded my internet to Cox Premier (12 mb services) due to the amazing slowness of the slower tier. I swear they managed to figure out a way to get me to spend more money by seriously degrading the service at the lower tier. I'm not a gamer, spend most of my time just browsing and emailing.
Last speed test was pretty darn good 11906 Kbps/648 Kbps so I'm not complaining about speed.
What I am starting to question is the cost of service. I have the bundled service phone/internet/television and pay $139 per month. I don't go crazy with premium services (HBO) - but they keep messing around with the "cost more" services on the HD television channels so the cost never goes down, it just goes up. I also notice that other types of broadband service offer multi-room DVR viewing and other things that Cox just doesn't offer and is painstakingly slow in rolling out. I'm going to seriously be comparing prices/services of other television providers and may switch out this service. Maybe TIVO is the way to go - who knows.
As for the high speed internet, right now I have a discounted rate of $47.35 a month which will go back up soon to around $56 per month once the promotion goes away. I have my own cable modem.
I dinged them on "pre-sales" information due to the confusing web site sales protocol. It's just not possible to put all the comparison pricing in one place - they force you to go through the charade of signing up for service. Seems complicated and unnecessary.
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