A few years ago my internet connection was complete crap, 12Mbps down/1Mbps up. I had called AT&T numerous times to complain about the fact that here we are in the late 2010’s and I was stuck with abysmal internet. While on my last call with them I was told that the 12Mbps/1Mbps that had been working for years, was provisioned wrong on my account and it was actually 10Mbps/500Kbps and so with the flick of their finger, my internet slowed down.
Right around 2017-2018 I had had enough of AT&T and decided to switch to Cox. I went from paying $56 for 12/1 to $109 for 300Mbps/35Mbps so I was more than ok with paying the extra fees for this bandwidth.
Earlier this year I get an email from Cox who states that those with older Docsis 3.0 modems would be moved to a new plan, 500Mbps/10Mbps. I think to myself ‘ok, I’m excluded from this’, as I have a Motorola MB8600 which is a Docsis 3.1 modem.
Around this time Ars Technica had posted an article about the email that Cox was sending out and in their article stated that you can request Cox leave you on the 300Mbps/35Mbps plan.
One day I decide to log into my Cox account and low and behold, my account is configured for some Arris Docsis 3.0 modem. In a panic I contact Cox customer support who corrects my modem issue but proceeds to tell me that I cannot keep my 300/35 and I must move to 500/10. I tell them about the Ars Technica article but am still denied on keeping the old plan. I ask if there’s any other plans that have 35Mbps up and was told “yes, the gigablast plan”. I ask the Cox agent what the costs are and she proceeds to tell me $99 a month. I Google gigablast and it’s $167! I ask the agent “so if I switch to this plan, do I need to sign a new contract? considering you are forcefully moving me from 300/35 to 500/10, I assume no?”. She says “No, no new contract”. So I ask her “So you’re saying I can move to gigablast, not sign a new contract, save money every month, and have 3x the speed?” She says “Yes!”.
Needless to say she was incorrect on the pricing. She couldn’t set it but had already told me it was $99 a month, so she got her manager’s approval to give me the gigablast plan for $99 a month. Score!