Cox Cable Woes....

[Meg Ostrowski]

-we've reached our data usage quota of 350 gb twice and were charged $10 extra for another 50gb of data. First time this happened was when we tried out sling for two weeks. The channel offerings for Sling are good, but I found the service glitchy. And it uses a lot of data, so beware.
Second time was in December with the kids off for two weeks using the internet and watching stuff on Amazon Prime and HBO Go on their tablets and our tv.

We have had this problem too. Since we primarily use NETFLIX we solved it by logging into MY ACCOUNT clicking on MY PROFILE, then PLAYBACK SETTINGS, selecting MEDIUM (1GB/hr) instead of HIGH (3GB/hr) and unselecting AUTO-PLAY.

The difference in quality is negligible and streaming stops at the end of an episode when someone leaves the room but forgets to come back.

I suspect other services have similar settings that can be adjusted to reduce the amount of data used.

[Tim Liston]

You can’t make this stuff up….

So after my last conversation with Cox I spoke with my wife. Of course she was quite fine with paying around $85 for 15Mb Internet and 80 channels, instead of the $140 (first) or $121 (second) Cox offered up before I disconnected the cable TV and took the equipment back to their store in Westgate.

So I called Kat back at Cox, and said let’s go with the Economy plan, but I have a couple more questions about equipment. Well my questions were over her head so she escalated me to Daniel, who explained the first hitch. That is, if I go with Economy, I have to go with the DVR service, even if I don’t want it. Well that would be fine but then you have to take the giant DVR boxes instead of the normal small box. You can also use a mini-box but you’ll only get the dozen or so local channels. This seems to me an artificial limitation designed to make the Economy plan less palatable.

So I conferred with Dawn that evening, she said stay with Economy (not just local) it and use the giant boxes. I said OK and went back to the Cox store. But I cheated and picked up a giant box and a mini box, because I wanted to try a couple things for myself. I hooked the mini-box to the bedroom TV, and sure enough I only got local channels. It did take a call to customer support to get that far, and it turns out I couldn’t use HDMI, I had to use a regular coax connection. But it was working. I did of course have to program the mini-box remote. No biggie.

So I disconnected the mini-box, put everything right down to the twist-ties in a bag, and connected the giant box in the bedroom. I was able to get it working just fine without even a phone call. And it got more than just the local channels.

But then the second hitch, a biggie, became clear. The 80 channels I get with the Economy plan were not the same 80 channels I got before. Not even close. The 80 Economy channels were the local channels, a smattering of the other channels I got before, a bunch of crap channels in the 200’s, and the Music Choice channels in the 900’s. Turns out I didn’t ask enough questions. Plus I hadn’t yet figured out how to get volume out of the channels I was getting.

Well by this time my wife was livid. But it was late yesterday and I said no matter, I’m done with it for the day. So I went back at it this morning. I took the giant box to the living room, and with a little help from phone support I got it going, with the crappy channels, volume and all. She (Sandra) was very helpful so I decided to ask her a bunch of questions about programming options. Of course she can only offer up what the computer tells her, because that differs from customer to customer. She said I could stay with Economy for $81.95 plus tax (about the $85 I was figuring). I asked her what plan I was on before, she said it was called the Advanced plan and I could get it for $113 (with taxes). And I could ditch the giant boxes, use a normal box in the family room, and a mini-box in the bedroom. So I said thanks and I’ll take it up with Dawn. Now that the giant box was working in the family room, I hooked the mini-box back up in the bedroom. So now we’re on Economy, with 80 so-so channels in the family room, but only local channels with the mini-box in the bedroom.

Whew!

So now I am down to three choices: (1) Stay the way I am with Economy, (2) stay with economy, but put a giant box in the bedroom and get more (crappy) channels there too, or (3) go to Advanced for about $30 more and get better channels, plus get rid of the giant boxes, at which point we’ll be EXACTLY where we were before, but for less money than Cox was willing to accept before I went through all the hoo-hah. Only about $200 less over two years, barely worth the time. And frankly none of this much matters to me. I don’t watch much TV, especially now. Three weeks away has steered me to other media choices (Pandora, Internet news, heck I even read the PD more thoroughly).

So Stan the outcome was not as good as I had hoped. If it was me I would get rid of cable TV, put up a couple antennas and get what I can, and start in on streamed TV. But it’s not up to me. There will be one more post short post here when we finally get settled on something. I write all this at this point because I kind of want to chronicle Cox’s behavior. One last thing I will say, I have dealt with four Cox reps on the phone and they have all been very helpful.

Back one more time soon….

[Stan Austin]

Tim---Whew! I feel as if I have been a student in some consumer course (advanced) with you as the professor. Or, is it you the victim? I, too, am looking at my options because I guess I'm going back ass half wards in that I have done sophisticated structured wiring and tomorrow am expecting delivery of a super duper curved TV. So, I don't know where I'll be consumer wise in the future.
What I would really like is for some millennial type person jump in on this discussion. Rumor has it that they have learned how to be happy by cutting the cable.
By the way, there's still a big 'ole antenna on my roof from the previous owners so I have some options there.
Stan

[Dan Alaimo]

It's like what I want to say to people in haunted house movies: "Get out while you can!"

[Corey Rossen]

Tim---Whew! I feel as if I have been a student in some consumer course (advanced) with you as the professor. Or, is it you the victim? I, too, am looking at my options because I guess I'm going back ass half wards in that I have done sophisticated structured wiring and tomorrow am expecting delivery of a super duper curved TV. So, I don't know where I'll be consumer wise in the future.
What I would really like is for some millennial type person jump in on this discussion. Rumor has it that they have learned how to be happy by cutting the cable.
By the way, there's still a big 'ole antenna on my roof from the previous owners so I have some options there.
Stan

Stan,

Keep the antenna, otherwise your Life Alert may not work. If you've fallen, you may never get up.

[Tim Liston]

Yet another update....

So my wife got home at around noon (she sings in the Old Stone Church chorus downtown). I told her what I had done, what video options we now have, how it all works, how much it now costs, and how much we are saving (about $55 a month!). She looked over the channels and said OK let’s go with this as is, at least for now, though I am gonna ask again tomorrow about a giant box in the bedroom, so she can get some non-local channels there. I think my window to trade the mini-box for a giant box is narrow, I’m kind of skating right now….

WHEW!!!!

Another thing I did, I decided I wanted to watch the NFL games but not on cable, as much for an exercise as anything else as both are on “local” cable (channels 4 and 8 which we get again). Well I got both games online, the early game on cbssports.com (no signup required) and the current game on foxsportsgo.com (which is available to Cox customers). Really good quality on the late game.

Stan….

Millennials are happy with currently-available streamed content because (1) “live” cable content is fundamentally different from today’s streamed content, and (2) millennials don’t mind that streamed content is harder to navigate, at least for now. The very channels my wife is going to miss (e.g. OWN, HGTV), millennials don’t watch. But a few “missed” channels clearly are not worth around $1000 over two years. The Economy plan offers all the local channels, all the cable news channels (millennials don’t watch much TV news), a couple movie channels (AMC, TCM) and plenty of others she also watches (E!, Discovery, Food, FX, History and several others). But I would not have gotten the same price new customers get unless I had dropped cable TV completely and taken the equipment back to the store. Brian Essi called that (earlier in this thread) a “sustained and credible” demonstration of our willingness to leave Cox for good at the inflated price. He was right on; it took Cox about three weeks to call us with “new customer” incentives. And they would have reinstalled everything I took back for free, but I wanted to do it myself so I could learn and address issues myself.

So the cable situation here in Lakewood is settled, at least for now. The next step in the journey will take place out at the lake house: put in local TV and Sling using a Roku 2 that they give new subscribers for free. It’s a different set of problems out there – 50 miles from the nearest broadcast antenna, different provider (Time Warner) and fast Internet may be pricey. But I’ll learn to overcome different issues, learn my way around programming/streamlining the operation of streaming receivers, and learn more about what’s available in streamed content. Then Stan, between your knowledge of structured wiring and what you are doing, which I would like to see someday, and what I have learned, we can teach the millennials a few things!

Then maybe like I said earlier I’ll pick the Z-Wave home automation project back up. Dunno why I put it down….

[Tim Liston]

So I’ve lived in Lakewood since 1985, and have been with Cox virtually all that time. But it was not until last night that I registered with Cox, online.

Also last night, I asked Dawn if the cable was OK the way it was, and did she want me to go back to the Cox store and get a giant box in the bedroom so we could get a few more channels there too. She said no, she decided she wants all the old channels back.

So I jumped onto Cox online this morning. It said the Economy plan with (15Mb) Internet Essentials was now costing us $76.97 plus tax ($81.95 total). Then, to add the handful of worthwhile channels we lost would cost an additional $40.49 plus tax, pretty close to what Sandra from Texas had told me yesterday. Well I figured maybe they could do better if I found one of their warm-blooded escalation people and bellyached. So I called Cox sales and talked for a bit to Robert, who told me $120+ a month. I said no, so he sent me on up to Scott who hunted around and told me $130+. I said I already see around $120 a month online and I won't pay that, hence my call. All he could say was “sorry.”

But while he was hunting he opened up a bit and told me something pretty interesting. Did you know that it’s possible the Super Bowl could be blacked out in Las Vegas (of all places!) due to a dispute between Cox and the CBS local affiliate?

(click here for the possible Super Bowl blackout story)

It’s an interesting story (and the comments too), but not unheard of, the dispute over carriage fees charged to cable distributors by the broadcast content providers. But what I find more interesting is the backstory about ESPN and content bundling by the cable companies. Again, ESPN is the 900 pound gorilla in the room. Any content bundle that includes ESPN (and FoxSports) is going to be expensive, whether you watch it or not. Cox’s Advance plan adds TLC, OWN and HGTV, but it also adds ESPN, FoxSports, FSO and STO. That’s why it’s $40.49 a month in addition. And I suspect if Cox tried to unbundle a separate “Sports Package” with ESPN and the rest it would fail miserably, being way too expensive for only those who actually want it. By the way MTV probably falls into the same category, to a lesser extent.

Live sports is a dirty secret in the cable TV business. Most cable customers pay enormously for live sports whether they watch it or not. Deneen alluded to that early in this thread. So did the article I posted earlier. Live sports could not make unbundled in any meaningful way, that’s what the earlier article says. Dawn and I subsidize Deneen’s live sports viewing. Cox’s Economy plan is by far the best way to obtain cable here in Lakewood if you have little interest in live sports. You’ll save a fortune! (But you'll never get a call from Cox with that suggestion, and they know darn well what you watch.) Between finally figuring that out, plus getting rid of cable long enough to become a “new customer” in the eyes of Cox, has made it possible for me to finally get a decent, convenient package for MUCH less than before. In my case about $1400 over two years had I just paid the bills without a second thought.

So tonight I once again try to convince the lovely Dawn to settle for the Internet Essentials and Economy TV: $76.79 a month, $81.95 total with taxes. And not spend about $1000 more over two years to add the 2-3 channels she will miss. I’d rather spend that money on four season tickets to The Beck….

PS I’m enjoying music so much more these days. I find a new favorite song every day. Today’s new favorite….

(click here for “Into The Mystic”)

It’s hard not to like Van Morrison. Like I said I’m kind of rediscovering my CD collection….

[Stan Austin]

Tim-- not to throw a monkey wrench into what seems to be your last act, but where does ATT enter into any comparisons? Stan

[Tim Liston]

Stan, good question. Like my very first post said, I live in an area of Lakewood that does not have Uverse as an option; we're not served by ATT except by way of DSL. Which the cynic in me presumes is why I got jerked around by Cox with the unforeseen 50% increase. And which made it even more necessary to gird my loins, de-install the equipment, take it to the store and wait. Brian's "sustained and credible" demonstration of resolve....

But other posters here have said that ATT plays the same games: promotional rates to reel you in, then giant increases a year or two hence, as ATT also presumes the switching hassle is not worth it. And ATT is subject to the same economies imposed by the live sports cabal. So ATT subscribers also have to be prepared to disconnect or to switch, and if live sports is not a priority, to proactively downgrade to a package that does not include ESPN/FoxSports/FSO/STO (no cable company is going to recommend this). By the way, STO got bought by Fox I think. One of my oldest's soccer teammates had an STO internship all lined up and it was cancelled last-minute due to the merger. So who knows what eventually happens to STO, if anything, but for sure they are (if only a bit) player in the live sports issue that cable companies and subscribers face.

[Tim Liston]

OK so I lost….

My wife pretty much demanded the restoration of all the old channels. That was a couple weeks ago. So I went back to the Cox store (my third trip) and got the equipment I needed to put everything back the way it was. And I hooked it all up. I even figured out how to get hi-def out of the mini box (you have to do the channel scan with the coax cable first, then replace it with the HDMI cable).

The only good news is that we’re now at "only" $113 a month for 15Mb Internet plus “Advanced” cable TV. That’s down from the $140/$130/$120 a month they offered along the way, depending on who you talked to, when you talked to them and what kind of mood they were in. Also, depending on who I talked to, the $113 rate could last for six months or for two years.

So now we’re getting TLC, OWN and HGTV again (woo-hoo!), but in reality we’re mostly paying for ESPN, FoxSports, FSO and STO, which we don’t watch. Sucks what they do. No wonder they’re called Cocks (err, Cox). If they told the truth and marketed “Advanced” as a “Live Sports” add-on package, for $30 to $50 a month whether you watch it or not, customers would be justifiably outraged. So they throw in a couple ladies must-have’s and call it “Advanced.” Upwards of $500 a year for TLC, HGTV and OWN. I feel abused....

But in the meantime I’ve started in on the Internet/TV options at the lake house. Nobody but me and the weekly tenants care what happens out here. And the tenants are mostly at the beach or Cedar Point, so they don’t care either. On Monday I’m gonna discontinue cable, wait the requisite 2-3 weeks, and see what Time Warner offers up to us “new customers.” Most likely I’ll go back to their local package, transfer Netflix out here, and set-up Amazon Prime. I’ve got Internet set up out here identically to the place in Lakewood, so all I have to do is grab the Roku device, plug it in out here, and I’m ready to go. I like what Amazon Prime does. I get an email once a week with their weekly specials. One thing I really like, they have a weekly “classic movie” free special. This week it was Batman. Last week Serpico (which I watched, great movie).

Also in the meantime I got my Plain Dealer bill. $66.75 for the next 13 weeks. So I called them and got it reduced to about $58. One ten-minute phone call and they found me a “promotional deal.” Next time I’ll probably go down to just Wednesday/Sunday, and get rid of Friday and Saturday. The Saturday paper is little more than a pamphlet these days. I'm surprised it doesn't blow off the front step. Remember one of my previous posts. It’s not what you make, it’s what you keep. Someday my daughters will be quite pleased by my thrift….

[Stan Austin]

Tim-- As long as we're discussing cable generally- ATT bought Direct TV several months ago. One of the options in Lakewood is ATT UVerse. (What a side show battle of the suits that was several years ago when ATT wanted to encroach on the Cox franchise). Last Sunday, Direct TV had door to door salespeople on my street. They were really doing a hard sell and disparaging UVerse. Once you compare apples to apples you're still pretty close in cost. And, there is that weird ass antenna on the house.
Last Tuesday I went to the Home and Garden Show. Direct TV had 5 booths spread throughout the Show floor all fully staffed with 5-6 people. Their speal also included knocking their corporate brethren. It's like Buick knocking Cadillac all with some larger corporate strategy involved. I can't figure it out. They even implied that my new TV which I haven't set up yet would get blurry and pixilated pictures from UVerse.
When I finally do set it up I'm going to have to do a deep dive look into what I'm really getting in what its true value to me is.
Stan

[Tim Liston]

Stan….

I was in Costco 2-3 Saturdays ago. While in the electronics area, the Direct TV guy ambled up to pitch me. I said to myself “why not. I’m in learning mode.” So one thing he says, “did you know that Cox has to black out the Super Bowl?” I told him my understanding was that was only true with the CBS affiliate in Las Vegas (KLAS), and only if KLAS and Cox could not come to a deal by then. He seemed surprised that I even knew the first thing about it, much less the truth. Apparently what you called “hard sell” includes what I call “lying out your ass”….

One thing I asked the guy, “is Direct TV streaming yet?” He said no. Since I started digging into this stuff, I’ve wondered why Direct TV isn’t streaming, why they still require subscribers to put up antennas. After all, Direct TV is fundamentally a video content distributor (via satellite) just like the traditional cable companies (via a wire to your home) and the “streaming” distributors (via the Internet, e.g. Hulu, Sling, Netflix). I suspect that Direct TV does great business in the boonies where coax is often not available.

Stan, your question I believe is (paraphrasing) “Where is AT&T headed with Direct TV and UVerse?" Stan I don’t know. But a hint might lie in an AT&T commercial I saw just yesterday. Seems AT&T as of just a couple days ago started touting 5G publicly. 5G is the successor to 4G/LTE. Both are broadband wireless technologies based on IEEE standards. But my guess is that 5G will finally be fast and reliable enough for everyday "real" video use. In the last paragraph I mentioned distribution by way of (1) satellite, (2) wire to the home, and (3) the Internet. I left one other video distribution technology out: (4) wireless broadband. Verizon is already distributing “real” video (not just the video snippets commonly viewed these days) via 4G/LTE in some markets I think (e.g. KC). Think “cable TV” on your tablet or phone. AT&T is heading the same way: acquiring/developing the technology to distribute video wirelessly via 5G.

So back to Direct TV and UVerse, my guess is that it’s all about setting the stage for 2019-2020, when wireless video distribution goes mainstream. 5G is a real game-changer I think. Unlike 2G, 3G and 4G, your video player (TV) won’t need to be tethered to the end of a wire, directly or by the way of your little household wi-fi or bluetooth cloud. It will be wireless all the way, using the same technology as your cell phone. Transmitted through a cloud the size of a continent, like your phone calls. And it won’t need to “buffer” because 5G is REALLY fast. Plus like it predecessors, 5G will support all types of devices: phones, tablets, computers, TV’s. And like Direct TV it will serve the boonies and most remote locations particularly well. Most of all, I’m sure there are countless applications for this that go way beyond sitting on the beach and watching HGTV in high-def. Remember the “device types” I mentioned in the last paragraph? Tablets, phones and such? Well you can add virtually anything to that list. Google “the Internet of things.” Even now I can turn up the heat from my cell phone, or see who’s at my front door, or start the crockpot. I have no idea what else can be done with 100 times faster communications technology. I mean who even thought of Uber even 10 years ago? What might be possible when wireless broadband is REALLY fast?

So Stan, there’s a bonanza in there somewhere. I just don’t know exactly what it is. I’m not sure anybody does. But 5G and Direct TV have one thing in common: no wires. They’re both completely wireless from the point of origin to the endpoint. For AT&T, there’s knowledge and customers to be mined from Direct TV. Just like Verizon is mining AOL, which they recently bought. And I suspect that 5G is going to be killer. Fast enough for virtually all applications. And it won’t crap out in a snowstorm.

Food for thought….

P.S. When long-distance wireless is as fast as coax, you can stick a fork in Cox Cable, even in their ISP business. As you know I think their traditional "cable" (content distribution) business is already dead. They'll be down to selling home security and automation, which by the way will be a pretty darn good business, thanks to "the Internet of things"....

[Tim Liston]

Anybody with neurons that fire adequately could see it coming….

ESPN Loses A Record 621,000 Subscribers In One Month

Who can afford $40 a month for live sports? It doesn’t matter how many must-have chick channels (that’s you Bravo) you bundle it with. The laws of natire (and their corrolaries) still apply. One of them: if it’s inherently unsustainable, it won’t last forever.

The unbundling of cable content can’t happen soon enough. All it really took was a lengthy recession; enough people are finally getting fed up. And if it destabilizes the NFL (that’s you Jimmy Haslam) that’s fine too. Wanna bet there’s a player strike in the next 2-3 years as the revenue shortfall winds its way down the ESPN/Disney/NFL/players food chain? I’d put it at 50/50. If you’re into failed business model train wrecks lke I am, this one will be fun to watch. Like the Postal Service. Bring on the popcorn!

[Tim Liston]

OK so here we go again….

After all the hubbub a couple years ago, I ended up permanently off Cox for cable content and went with DirecTV Now and Netflix. Of course we stayed with Cox for our Internet. Both my wife and I have been very satisfied with DirecTV Now. The basic plan has all the must-have chick channels, all the locals, news, sports and quite a bit more. Plenty of options. The only quarrel, and it’s very minor, it can be a little glitchy at times, and is not quite as easy to use as Cox Cable. And you’re limited to two streams concurrently, though this is seldom an issue for us. We also like Netflix and share the account with our daughter in Denver (and gladly pay extra for multiple concurrent streams).

(And by the way I put in Roku sticks throughout the house. They work great, with just one exception. We have one TV that doesn’t always provide sufficient power to the Roku stick from its USB port. So we have to turn that TV off and on very occasionally. I tried powering it from the wall AC, which works fine, but then the Roku keeps streaming even after you turn the TV off. Which runs up your data usage.)

But here’s the latest. A couple days ago I got an email from Cox saying hey, we just increased your speed from 15Mbps to 30Mbps. And no extra charge. Wow, sounds like a good deal, right? Two streams plus whatever won’t challenge our bandwidth anymore.

Well not so fast. What they didn’t do was increase the cap on my data usage (1048Mb per billing month) before the overcharges hit. And what I’m noticing, thanks to the very good app that comes with my Google mesh network, is that the same level of TV usage results in more data usage, so that come the end of the month we’re going to be well over our cap, even if we’re watching no more TV than usual. I suspect the additional data usage improves the picture quality, but that never was an issue before. And I think it can’t be a coincidence that our “free” increase in speed comes just after two months in a row that we were at about 95% of our cap. But Cox wouldn’t know that I know that. Actual usage is never shown on the bills.

So now I gotta figure out how to throttle both DirecTV Now and Netflix so that they don’t want to use the entire 30Mbps available to them. Or I’m gonna get a $200 Internet bill from Cox. I tried doing it with DirecTV Now this morning and couldn’t quickly figure it out. And their customer service seemed to be unavailable (albeit on a Sunday).

I can be suspicious, admittedly, but to me it’s Cox up to its old tricks. They know darn well we run very close to our data cap. They know what streaming services we use. I suspect they know what device types we use (the most-used being 4K). And the email we received said nothing about the possibility that the “free” speed increase would very likely blow you well past your data cap.

I bet if I hadn’t watched my wifi app, and I ended up getting a huge bill, they would forgive it if I went to their next speed tier, which I think is 100Mbps and has a higher cap. And I’d be right back where I was a year ago, paying $150 or so total and not even getting the convenience of cable content. Does anybody have any experience with this sort of thing? I know I’m not gonna find out. I’m going to figure out how to throttle my streaming services so that they are not as demanding of the additional bandwidth, even if it means a somewhat lesser quality picture.

That’s what I get for buying my first 4K TV a few months back. I’m gonna have to turn it into a 1080p TV (or worse) or my Cox bill skyrockets. 15Mbps was perfect. It barely served two streams. “Free” 30Mbps is more than I want or need, and will just end up costing me.

Be wary….