COX Cable censors the numbers you can call
There is this great service called FreeConference.com – as the name implies, you create an ID, and from that moment on you create conference calls with many participants TOTALLY FREE. Yep, no cost to you besides the call. It is a long distance call, but since most of us pay a single flat fee for unlimited calling in the US, it’s free to you.
Neat idea, eh? It truly is. And an invaluable service if you have a small business, a cash-strapped non-for-profit, or a spreadout family that would love to chat as a group every so often.
Neat, that is, unless you use COX Cable Phone in Santa Barbara. There, COX Cable censors your calls, so that if you call a number provided by FreeConference.com, you get an ambiguous message that says “All circuits are busy. Call later”. Which is, of course, a lie. How do I know? All other participants, calling from any other town, or even from Santa Barbara but not on COX, get through without a problem. Go to another house with COX service, call any of those numbers and guess what… you get the same message.
I am, of course, looking for ways out of COX. In my case, because there is no previous phone line coming into my house, it may take a more expensive service to replace them. But even so, I will. These troglodytes that turned “customer service” into an oxymoron need to disappear, once and for all. Right now they play the monopoly (or oligopoly) games: you don’t bug me and my dirty practices, I won’t bug you and yours. But with increasingly social efficiencies brought about by the Social Internet, we can all help each other identify crooks like COX Cable, and get rid of them.
I may not be worth anything to them, but I have service with them in two properties (one of them in Santa Barbara). The way I see it, I can hurt them at the tune of approximately $6,000 a year, $60,000 in ten years. That’s really sweet.
Don;t take more abuse from COX: cancel your cable and phone. Yes, there will be other options. And by the way, next time somebody mentions net neutrality, remember it means that these crooks will not be able to select which numbers you call, which IP services you use, or which bytes are worth more to you than others. Companies like COX want to be in the extortion business.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 9:59 pm and is filed under monopolies, nausea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on February 27, 2010 at 7:54 pm Peter wrote:
I have a similar story except is has to do with their internet. Ever since me and my mother got their internet service, it has been a little patchy, sometimes itll be there sometimes it wont but ive noticed a trend in lack of service. When i visit certain websites such as the pirate bay, 4chan, and porn websites, more often than in other cases, after some time i will lose my connection to the internet. I actually found this blog post trying to find others who have experienced this problem.
on February 28, 2010 at 2:58 pm Carlos Caballero wrote:
Interestingly enough, I use Cox in Orange County (where I have a choice between providers) and in Santa Barbara (where, because of the fact that there is no phone cable coming into my property, I am forced to). In OC, the service from Cox is OUTSTANDING; almost 3Mb/sec downstream, no significative outages, no censorship whatsoever. I understand that they operate as a franchise, that’s the only explanation I can find for this.
In Santa Barbara, on the other hand, Cox Cable’s service is insultingly bad:
* Censored phone numbers (I am not talking 877 numbers, rather common FreeConferenceCall.com numbers)
* Sabotaged Skype personal numbers (One out of two calls to my Skype number gets the “All circuits are busy” message)
* Intentionally blocked PC’s when connected via router (I guess Cox expects to charge me separately for a second PC).
I have been looking for all possible alternatives to side-step them. I am now looking at Covad, a service targeting businesses, where I will pay more than double than Cox’s prices, *just for the satisfaction of not giving them my money*. And, of course, if at ANY time there is a possibility of participating in a boycott against them, I will do whatever I can to participate… the numbers are on our side: if just a hundred of us boycott them, at an average $75 for two services bundled per month, we are talking $100,000 per year in lost business.
Can’t wait to get rid of them…