I am in the area that suffered catastrophic and unprecedented flooding near Denham Springs, Louisiana. I and most of my neighborhood, while dodging the most severe flooding, still had a few houses that took on water, albeit nothing like many others. Internet and Electricity both went out on Saturday over a week ago. Electricity returned to our area late Monday and the area became fully accessible Tuesday.
Cox has indicated that they lost all equipment at their local switching plant. It would appear they had neither fail-over or switching capability nor a reasonable Continuity of Services plan. It was apparent early into this that their plant was under water, but it would seem they waited to visit to see the damage, rather than have duplicity in place to quickly restore their services. Instead of having management out front, they relied on Customer Service Reps and Techs to deal with customer interaction. Their standard canned responses have continued verbatim for most of the week, and now they have pretty much moved on from active engagement, stating, "they are delayed by lack of access to areas affected and resumption of services that are needed to complete their work." Both of those things have been in place for the entire area for at least 5 days. I guess that means they closed shop and called it a win.
It would seem corporate in Atlanta is using hackneyed messaging in an attempt to convince those who don't have a clue "they are doing all they can." I suspect they don't want to spend more money or resources that they can't get a return on since the customer base has shrunk. Funny that this is what probably got them here in the first place because they didn't want to spend money on redundancy or alternate site operations in the event of a natural disaster. Of course, in Southern Louisiana we face that every year. I have to guess because they say they have no idea of progress, what has been completed, or what is next. I guess making decisions from Atlanta doesn't always give the best results.
Other companies reacted quickly and some had teams on the ground meeting with residents in their neighborhoods, passing out water, bringing food, and assessing the needs from the first opportunity. There hasn't been a Cox Tech within 2 miles this week. Unfortunately those companies either aren't allowed to service our areas or the speeds are so much less (less than 1/10th) as to not be a viable option. Monopoly isn't a good thing.
But as I sit here at the end of Day Eight without Internet, typing using my AT&T phone as a Hotspot for my home computer, I dream of a day when some other company comes along with actual high speed internet other than Cox.
Prayers out to those who suffered and are still suffering much worse than I am. My problems pale in comparison to yours.
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