On 8/9 The internet went down at our office. Our company operates 100% over the phone and computers. We have roughly 30 people working here. We went through the normal procedures to trouble shoot the issue. We even phoned Cox our service provider. They initially confirmed that nothing looked wrong from their end. We eventually had to call in our consultants (at $90 per hour) to figure out what was going on. After an hour of testing we called Cox again and got to a tier 2 person. This person, Andrew, confirmed that our IP address had been resold to another Cox customer without any warning to us. The IP address that was sold away from us was one that we had been using for roughly 4 years. ALL of our company's internet and interoffice systems work off of that IP address. So essentially our entire office us brought to a screeching halt some time around noon yesterday.
So after roughly 2 hrs of trying to fix an unfix able problem, we had to send everyone home early. Almost half the office had already been sitting around for over 2 hrs twittling their thumbs on company time. Luckily our consultants (@$90 per hour) were able to get all of our systems switched to another IP. Combined time for the consultants was over 5 hours.
Here is the kicker... I called Cox yesterday to find out how this could happen. I was not able to get any type of explanation nor did they offer any type of credit. I left a message with a tech to call me on my cell the next day with a thorough explanation. I never received a call. So I called them today at 3pm to find out what they were planning to do about it. I finally got a manager on the phone after a combined 30 minutes of hold time over the past 2 days. The manager called the situation a "misunderstanding". I asked her how much credit they were going to offer us. She indicated that they were going to offer us nothing. After some more pleading I finally got her to offer me one day of service. The equivalent of $5.
The amount of money our company lost yesterday as a result of Cox selling our IP address to another customer and thus shutting down our office without warning is in the thousands if not tens of thousands. The female manager that I spoke to there was neither helpful or friendly. I HIGHLY recommend you look elsewhere for internet service for your business. DO NOT let what happened to us happen to you. COX blew it big time, they know it, and they are doing nothing about it. COX ripped us off big time. Check out AIS they are way better. Maybe if Cox didn't have such a monopoly in this town we would have some better options. Steer clear of COX.
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