New TiVO arrives. I get it installed; it works within the limits of an off-the-shelf unit that doesn’t have the CableCards for the local service (i.e. it gets the basic tier of channels but not the full set).
Monday:
Cox Tech 1 arrives. After about a dozen false starts, he gets the CableCards to appear to work. However, it turns out that some of the channels still don’t come in.
Tuesday:
Cox Tech 2 arrives. He installs a tuning adapter, which is supposed to bring in the channels that are being conveyed through some sort of switching arrangement that the CableCards don’t cope with properly. At first, all seems well, but later the picture intermittently drops out with a Tuning-Adapter-Not-Found error message.
Wednesday:
Cox Tech 3 arrives. He removes everything and installs a Cox DVR with the higher functions turned off (basically, a big bulky cable box), claiming that it can be controlled from the TiVO remote by setting the Cox DVR to Channel 3. In fact, the TiVO has to be set to Channel 3, tuning is done from the Cox DVR box, and there is no way for the system to perform preprogrammed recording.
I am no longer sufficiently charitable to apply Hanlon’s Razor, and believe that Cox is making a deliberately half-assed attempt to “comply” with compatibility rules in order to leverage its cable monopoly into a DVR monopoly.
It’s funny, I lived in Fairfax VA YEARS ago and all I had to do was see Cox and Fairfax in the same thread title to make my blood pressure go up. Those guys are huge douche bags.
Heh. Funny thing is, aside from the annoyance at going through the “computer is plugged in and turned on” rigmarole when there’s a line problem* they’ve actually been far more helpful with problems than Comcast or Verizon (phone/DSL only at the time) ever were. I guess if your standards are low enough everything looks better.
If my TV and my computer are both not connecting, and the DVR can’t even figure out what time it is, power-cycling my cable modem will not fix things. Send out a tech.
I especially loved the time I called tech support because my internet was down and was told by the tech that everything was fine, and that he could see my cable modem and access it fine. I was standing in the kitchen with my unplugged cable modem in my hands at the time.
In theory, I’ll have Verizon soon. I’ve heard stories about them, but kind of think that nothing could be worse than Cox.
Coxsuckers pisses me off sometimes, too, if for no reason than I pay mumbly-mumble bucks a month for internet and it craps out almost every other week.
They’re still better than Verizon, which we had at the last house at our roommate’s insistence. The Mr. brought in his network voodoo expert friend, who couldn’t fix it. We called Verizon, who eventually–after saying to wait home for the tech and never showing up–sent someone out to look at it. He gave up and told us to use various neighbors’ unlocked wireless internet. :dubious:
So, as much as I hate random internet outages, it’s better than being told to steal.
Hey at least they tried to get you a tuning adapter. I have Time Warner in NC and I can’t even get most of my digital channels on my TiVo HD because they’re using switched digital now and they haven’t released the tuning adapters in my market.
We just switched to Verizon FIOS. Cox was the only game in town for so long that I’d gotten used to the crappy signal. Every now and then I’d realize “hey, maybe Animal Planet SHOULDN’T be showing ghosts of PBS” but it was always too much trouble to try to get it fixed. Heck, they already fixed the signal once, by installing a booster that turned the picture from “utterly intolerable” to “OK if you don’t need to look for details”. They came out last April when I got fed up with the ghosting, the guy basically shrugged and said it must be bad lines to the house and they’d have to pull new lines and he’d put in a work order for same… and surely I wanted digital cable as it was awesome.
Well, the problems with regular cable were enough that I wasn’t eager to trust them with digital (even tho it MAY have been better), PLUS, I really liked being able to change all the channels with just the TV remote, and didn’t want the hassle of a set-top box.
So FIOS came to dig up our neighborhood a few weeks later, and I finally got off my duff and ordered it last month. Only problem there is there is one work-related website I simply cannot access from home.
The Cox person who took my disconnect request tried very hard to dissuade me… though as we’d had FIOS for nearly a week at that point, he was unsuccessful.
In Cox’s defense, the broadband internet was generally just fine. It was just the TV that sucked.
And FIOS’s phone signal - while perfectly clear - doesn’t connect instantly when I pick it up, I have to listen to boopboopboopboopboopboop before getting the dial tone.
Mama Zappa, I got a million of them! Or seems like it. Did I ever tell you about the Cox tech that cut our line then blamed it on us? He was digging a trench for a new line to the outside box (why this had to be done prior to the line getting there I’ll never know) and cut through the existing line. So we went from crappy service to none in the time it takes to drive a shovel into the ground. His explanation? “You must have moved the line at some point.” Damn! He found me out! Now I can’t engage in my weekend hobby of line moving any more.
Yeah, FIOS is doing the digging in our neighborhood right now, and I can’t wait. We don’t have home phone service, so I can’t comment there, but we’ve had multiple problems with both internet and TV with Cox. One of my neighbors became so fed up that he paid to have a high speed line installed by the phone company and shares the bandwidth with a couple of neighbors. They pay a little more, but they don’t have the outages the rest of us get.
I’m thinking that our neighborhood will become a Cox-free zone in the near future.
Hmmm. Never had anything quite like that with Cox. Closest I hever had was with Manhattan Cable in 1992. Alla sudden my cable quit working. It was a week and half before they came out to fix it. Turns out, someone had installed a blocker / terminator doohickey in the cable in the stairwell - to prevent cable theft, I think. Keeping me from using my legal, paid-for services. And the time I moved from one apartment to the other in the same building - and the tech insisted on taking the old cable box and putting in a new one.
Which only worked on half the channels. The ones he didn’t test before leaving.
That was another week and a half to get fixed. Cox’s service RAWKS compared with Manhattan Cable.
We turn on the sprinkler system in April or thereabouts. That’ll be the real test: seeing if FIOS people managed to cut any of those lines while doing the FIOS install (supposedly they did a little digging to do the actual install).
I am amazed at how Cox continues to win awards for service. We had a problem with their billing and were told after 10 minutes that the agent could not spend longer than 10 minutes on a call and we’d be referred to a supervisor. We were put on hold and about 30 seconds then the call was disconnected. We called back and were told that we had already addressed that issue and was there anything else they could help us with.
I’m waiting for the day I get surveyed about Cox and their service. They certainly don’t deserve the awards they claim they are getting.
Comcast’s incompetence and sheer obstreperousness are indeed legend – not only did techs fail to even install their own cable internet system correctly on my machine, in three separate visits, but they also told me in a separate incident that they couldn’t help me re-establish access because I was using my own personal cable router, not Comcast standard equipment. The router in question bears Comcast’s label, was installed by their techs, and I pay a monthly rental charge for it. That’s because they told me they would not permit me to use a router I already owned.
Despite this, they remain the finest Internet service provider and cable company I have ever worked with.
Much like the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.
So, they took your nice Tivo unit and replaced it with a Cox DVR? Ummm…that’s not really the same thing. I’d be complaining pretty loud at that set-up. Don’t ya’ll have the option of getting DirectTV or Dish? Sure their installation techs can be just as ignorant, but once it’s set up, at least it pretty much just works all the time.
We kind of have Comcast. We got behind on the monthly bill so a guy comes out to disconnect us. Knocks at the door - talks to my husband - we write him a check for about $116 - he takes the check, doesn’t disconnect us and we’re good to go! One week later, the check clears, and we get a letter from Comcast saying that they’re sorry to lose us as customers, and we haven’t seen a bill since!! This is going on a year now. Dumbasses.
No; they installed a Cox unit upstream from the TiVO, claiming it would fix the problems despite the obvious fact that the TiVO has no way of telling it which channel to select.
Currently, somebody who seems to be a bit more clueful is re-installing the cable cards and tuning adapter. The problems with the previous cable cards and tuning adapter seem to be a configuration issue, that may or may not recur.
You might have to leave the tuning adapter alone for around 24 hours before attempting anything else - they seem to take a bit of time to get to full access to switched channels.
I too had fios installed about a month ago and had that annoying boopboopboopboop so I finally read all the stuff that came with the install and found out if you get the bundle with the phone service, they automatically set up voicemail for you. The boopboopboopboop that I was hearing was the voicemail telling me I had messages.
Sure enough, when I called the voicemail number, I had a bunch of messages on there.
So you may want to give the customer service folks a call to see if that’s the issue. If not, then you’ll want to get a tech out there, 'cause that’s not how it should work.
Mark
If you haven’t found this place already, check out www.tivocommunity.com. They are an amazing board for TiVo owners. They may have folks who’ve been through what you’re going through with Cox right now. Even if not, it’s a good board to check out.
Mark
Indeed this is the case! I was chatting with another parent at Girl Scouts tonight and mentioned this and she said “mine is doing that too. I wonder if it means we’ve got voice mail?”.
So I checked - and there was an informational packet in today’s mail with instructions on how to set it up, and yep, there was a voice mail from my MIL from Monday (fortunately, she wasn’t offended that we’d waited so long to call back).
As we have an answering machine to take regular messages, and that actually flashes at us, I don’t think I’'ll rely on the voicemail too often. In fact, I may change the “busy” greeting to say “we’re morons. If you really need to get hold of us, maybe call again in a few because otherwise we’ll forget to check”.
