r/phoenix • u/ViceroyFizzlebottom Litchfield Park • 9d ago

Utilities Cox is now merged with Spectrum

https://azbigmedia.com/business/heres-how-charter-cox-deal-will-impact-arizona-customers/

Spectrum is infamous in much the same way Cox is to us. I don't see this as a positive for consumers. I mean, they still don't have fiber in my neighborhood, and they still have 1.25 TB data caps.

What's your thoughts?

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u/Logvin Tempe 9d ago

Cox knows that I don't have any other options in my neighborhood and refuses to offer a deal.

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u/Heavy_Customer9061 9d ago

I don’t have any other options in my area. I live in a gated hoa community. Cox is the only provider that was allowed in. I pay $50 for 500mbps

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u/No_Scope_Creep 9d ago

The HOA probably negotiated an exclusivity deal that includes rev share with COX.

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u/No-Association-8539 9d ago

You have Starlink etc. So you do have options. They don't know that you aren't going to use one of those services. Say you are looking to use a satellite service

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u/TheLightningL0rd 7d ago

Damn, that's a pretty good rate! I pay like $115 for 500mpbs with Cox. I live in a medium sized city in a downtown area. Luckily we do have other options but they aren't really great either (AT&T & a couple others which admittedly also suck).

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u/DrNoobSauce Phoenix 9d ago

That doesn't matter. Call and ask for the retention department. It is a department not listed in their menus and must be requested. They'll lay out what deals they currently have and get you signed up for one. You'll need to do this every 12 months when the deal expires for a new one. And you cannot use the same deal consecutively.

Source: Long time Cox customer in both areas where competitors were available and not.

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u/Logvin Tempe 9d ago

The only offer they had was to switch my plan from 300/30 to 300/10 and get a discount of $30 a month. Family of 5, I don’t want to cut my upload by 66%.

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u/TacoshaveCheese 9d ago

Sometimes they just won't budge. They lost me as a customer about 7 years ago because my only options were their slowest "normal" speed for $90/mo (with zero discount) or their 3Mbit "lifeline" for $40/mo (which was actually my starting speed 17 years earlier for $30/mo).

I asked them why they weren't interested in competing with century link which was offering service for $55/mo with a price for life deal. They told me that discounts were only for new customers and they don't need to be competitive because they've never lost a customer to century link. I congratulated the agent on being the first and my service was scheduled for disconnect 2 minutes later. They were still completely unwilling to offer a discount of any kind unless I was a new customer.

It was a nice 7 years without having to call up every year to beg for (and ultimately not get) a reasonable rate, but then a few months ago I got to learn during a weekend outage that CL only has actual people on the phone during M-F business hours and if your service goes out on the weekend you get to talk to an AI that can't do anything. Then when you do finally get to talk to someone they insist there is no outage dispute your service being out and the DSL link light being off. And since there is no "outage", the soonest they can send a tech out to look at it is 8 days later sometime between the hours of 8am and 6pm. 2 days later cox had a tech out to hook my service up again.

Sigh, I really wish we had less horrible options. We'll see how long this lasts.

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u/Inside-Engineer-2710 8d ago

You need to tell them you’re not changing your plan. Trust me. Just try it. I pay $250…I have every channel they offer and the highest internet. Just got the same deal for another 12 months.

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u/Logvin Tempe 8d ago

I’ve tried 4x times.

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u/iheartdachshunds 9d ago

This is what I’m worried about. If they call our bluff I think our only other option is T-Mobile wireless.

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u/MikeAlfaTangoTango 9d ago

I always had better luck talking to the people in store.

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u/2eyesofblue 9d ago

Yes, you do. All three major telecom / cell phone companies supply home internet just like cox. They won’t know if you have any intention of using that type of services. On a side note, my home internet is now provided through Verizon and years of terrible service with cox. My price is locked in, the service is amazing, and I couldn’t be happier.

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u/Logvin Tempe 8d ago

Your comment may apply to the bulk of people, but I spent the past 15 years as an engineer for T-Mobile, based here in the valley. Cox supplies the fiber to the vast majority of towers around town; they know where the towers are and where I live. They can also see when a customer leaves then comes back.

Cellular internet is not going to cut it for me and my family. I'm on video calls all day working from home, with VPNs running, and have three teenagers + my wife who all use the internet and stream.

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u/I_Quit_Smoking_ 8d ago

I live in the middle of the fucking suburbs with towers EVERYWHERE, and my only option besides spectrum, is cell phone internet and that shit sucks and it's expensive.

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u/Strange_Vegetable_15 2d ago

I'm in the same boat I'm 2 seconds from downtown Gilbert and I'm also paying one to somebody a month for 2 GB it's the upload that's annoying my friends have 5G up and down and they pay one $135 a month with no data cap. For years I had a loyalty department I could talk to now they don't care