Advice

For some reason, our Internet connection went down this morning. I called Cox to see what they could do for me and waded through 20 minutes of automated support (which was basically shut down and restart the cable modem) to finally get to a human being.

Josh didn't really inquire much on the problem and immediately suggested that we replace the Motorola Surfboard modem we have. It is about 8 years old, so the idea made some sense to me. On the way to the RAC, we were going to stop by the Cox service center to pick up a new one. Luckily, they have the convienent hours of 9-12 on Saturday and since we were there at 1 PM or so, we were unable to receive any service. When we got home, I tried the television and the cable box was kind of hung (it showed a screen saying the channel it was tuned to was unavailable and wouldn't respond to any commands at all). After it cleared itself up in a few minutes, the cable modem went back online and is happily working away.

Besides the size of the bill, this is the only negative experience I've had with Cox. The cable service has been very reliable and the tech support has usually been reasonable. This time, I just got lucky to avoid spending $75 I didn't have to.