Cox → Re: [AZ] Cox HSI Ultimate on-premises visit

Honestly? I don't think its to charge a fee, because no matter what, they aren't really making a profit on it. What their reasons probably are is to save on return visits. You may be perfectly fit (and from the sound of it, well beyond) to install it yourself, but I doubt the average Joe is. And how would someone on the phone know you are equipped? Even if you have the exact right modem, perfect signal, there's all kinds of things that could go wrong for the uninformed. All it takes is a small proportion of people calling in after a self install demanding a tech at no charge (because of course they did everything right....) for overhead to go up. So they created a uniform procedure. Happens a lot in large industries.

What I think would be a good compromise would be to pay the same for a self install as a professional install, and if you don't have any trouble calls within a certain period, you get the difference between a self and a professional install reimbursed. It reinforces the idea of saving money and removes the the risk to the Provider. But the whole thing will be moot soon, as D3 technology becomes more common place, I think the procedure will change, just like it did with DVR's. I remember when you couldn't self install those either.

or how about pay the install fee if the self install fails?

That I agree with. Im perfectly willing to sign some "waiver" or whatever that says I will pay the fee if I screw up the "install". But considering it's really just a config push to my modem there's not even a self install option.

I see the need for the fee for the whole Dvr's install because the Poe filter.

Its the word "fail" which makes it tricky. Who decides if it failed? I don't disagree with you in theory and on the small scale, I'm mostly playing devil's advocate. It could have to do with a worry about hacked hardware, I think that's why they held off cable card self install. Or maybe they think by making it a pro install only, it gives the image of rolling out the red carpet. That seems to have less impact though when your the one paying for the carpet huh? Or maybe it helps them better monitor how many people are using Ultimate to better manage bandwidth in a given area? Probably a small mix of all those with the bottom line being money. JMHO.

That's the thing. There's no service install and there's no user install. It's just a config push. No different than they di any other time for normal maintenance. That's why the $50 thing irks me.