Cox Cable, on the heels of announcing another rate increase, is earning customer ire for downright nasty customer service.

Customers dealing with two different service blackouts and a flood have gotten a thumbs-down response from Cox when looking for some service credits and understanding.

‘We don’t give refunds,’ came the reply from one customer service agent called by Stop the Cap! reader Jennifer from Providence, R.I. Her service went out in mid-December after a burst water pipe in the neighborhood flooded their home, making in uninhabitable until a mold mitigation team completed repairs. After fleeing to stay with relatives, it suddenly dawned on Jennifer that Cox Cable kept her waiting on hold so long, she hung up and forgot to call them back.

“All I needed to do was notify them we were not going to be using our Cox service for about a month and we needed to suspend our account,” Jennifer tells us. “When I finally got a customer service agent, the first thing I heard was him blowing his nose several times before he finally introduced himself.”

The surly agent was not interested in Jennifer’s plight or her request to suspend service.

“Your flooding problems are yours to solve and we can’t help you with suspending service unless you are going away for much longer than that,” came the reply. “And we are certainly not able to give you a refund either. It isn’t our fault.”

Jennifer was stunned at the nasty attitude she got, especially after other companies were far more understanding.

“I had nothing but sympathy from Verizon, the power company, and even the newspaper which we also stopped,” she says. “Cox could not have cared less and we did not even create the problem.”

Cox customers in Ohio also got the same special touch from Cox’s representatives.

Rev. Dave Connor from Lakewood was looking for a $1.50 credit for a few local channels that were stripped off his cable lineup because of yet another carriage-for-money dispute. Raycom wanted more cash for its two local channels and Cox did not want to pay so off they went from the lineup, at least temporarily. But the cable operator did not want to give any refunds for the missing channels customers had been paying to receive.

It took several escalating phone calls before Cox finally relented to a one-time credit, putting a sour taste in the Rev. Dave’s mouth.

“Some ‘friend in the digital age,’” he told the Lakewood Patch, referencing the company’s ad slogan.

Before others got the idea they deserved a refund as well, Dana Alexander Nolfe, director of communications for Cox, hurried out to let customers know they can just forget it.

Nolfe told the Patch the refund granted Connor was a one-time “gesture of goodwill,” adding no one else will likely be given a similar refund.

“We are not crediting our customers as a result of the Raycom dispute,” Nolfe said. “We offer a package of channels, not individual channels on our lineup. We regularly make changes to our lineup, mostly with additions, but at times, regrettably, when a channel is removed from our lineup.”

Ian King called Cox “the worst,” noting the company refused refunds for customers left without service for days after the remnants of Hurricane Sandy meandered across Ohio.

“Cox is nothing but a PR campaign that constantly tells us how wonderful they are, but in reality they could care less,” King said.

Jennifer says she won’t forget.

“After we move back, one of the first things I will be doing is dropping them and their smug representative on their heads.”

Mediacom, regularly rated America’s worst cable operator by Consumer Reports, is earning its bad reputation when it left one Iowa retirement community with extended outages that began Dec. 20 and did not get resolved for more than two weeks.

Dozens of elderly residents at the Good Life Retirement Apartments in Norwalk, Iowa were unable to talk to anyone except a national technical support center that never connected the dots about the broader outage and only arranged individual service calls that never addressed the larger problem.

When the Des Moines Register’s consumer watchdog began receiving calls, Mediacom finally noticed.

The optics of delivering bad service to a retirement community populated primarily by 70+ year old retirees on fixed incomes that depend on cable television for entertainment delivered the cable company yet another public relations blow.

A Mediacom official finally acknowledged there was a bigger problem. Phyllis Peters, communications director for Mediacom, told the newspaper the outages were due to a “rare and broader issue” that affected customers across Des Moines.

Affected customers have been given credits for the extended outages, finally resolved Jan. 4, but most would have rather received working service.

“With this being a senior community, we don’t get to go out to the movies at night,” Edna Haines told the Register. “Our TV is our entertainment.”

Mediacom claims they are addressing their poor reputation for customer service with two new initiatives:

• Customers left endlessly on hold can select a new call-back feature to request a local employee call back the customer at a pre-selected time;
• Mediacom’s national customer service center (1-800-332-0245) now uses speech recognition to help direct calls to the appropriate department.

A source today told Broadband Reports Charter Communications plans to eliminate the company’s social media department that handles customer complaints and concerns on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere in a broader move to cut costs.

Charter’s social media team

The insider reports company executives informed the Umatter2Charter social media team in Town and Country, Mo. they could move to new positions at Charter’s customer call center or leave the company starting Jan. 1.

The source claims Charter’s new management team of mostly ex-Cablevision executives is behind the decision.

Charter Communications’ decision to scale back on customer relations comes even though the company is regarded as one of the nation’s worst cable operators by customers who give it poor marks year after year.

Investors don’t think too highly of the company either. Charter reported a wider third-quarter loss in November, losing $87 million compared with $85 million lost during the same quarter last year. Executives tell Wall Street  the company was in chaos before new management under Tom Rutledge took over operations. Rutledge’s priorities are to invest in new set top boxes, convert more of its systems to digital, raise prices on services, cut back on promotions and retention offers, and centralize customer support operations.

That centralization process seems to be the reason behind the change.

“Charter will no longer have a customer care team tasked specifically with resolving matters raised on social media,” Charter’s social media manager Eric Ketzer told Broadband Reports. “We communicate with thousands of customers each day on the phone and in person, and that’s where we’ll focus our efforts.”

AT&T has once again received the dubious distinction of being America’s worst cell phone company, according to ratings (sub. required) from Consumer Reports.

AT&T’s bottom-of-the-barrel status has become something of an annual tradition in the consumer magazine’s ratings, as the company remains in last place year after year for dreadful performance, poor value, and downright lousy customer service. Its one bright spot: the company’s new 4G LTE service, which gets top marks for speed, although that rating comes before the majority of its customers are on the new network.

Verizon Wireless also took a tumble in the ratings published in the January 2013 issue. Verizon got downgraded for its new Share Everything plan, rated as only a fair value. Verizon’s vaunted customer service also declined significantly.

The highest ratings went to companies many never heard of:

• Consumer Cellular: This company resells AT&T service. The disparity between this top-rated, no contract provider and AT&T demonstrates that a bad customer experience with AT&T’s high prices and poor customer service can topple your ratings across the board. Consumer Cellular will face the same growing pains AT&T’s customers do in congested cities, but their customers seem to tolerate them better;
• U.S. Cellular: Top rated last year, this regional carrier provides service in the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, parts of the East and New England. The carrier, like the southern U.S. provider C-Spire, would probably have been acquired by one of the top-four carriers if the Justice Department seemed willing to accept further market consolidation. Its customers benefit from the company’s independence.
• Credo Mobile: Resells the Sprint network, but delivers superior customer service, which boosts its overall ratings. Formerly known as Working Assets, this progressive organization also enjoys loyalty because customers approve of the political and social causes with which it affiliates.

Overall, the magazine increasingly recommends consumers investigate no-contract or prepaid service plans before signing an expensive 2-year contract with the major four carriers. Pricing changes in 2012 have caused many subscribers to see bills rise, even as perks and benefits continue to erode. Device activation fees, upgrade fees, limits on early upgrades, restricted data plans, and all-or-nothing offerings that deliver (and charge) for features many consumers don’t use much have all reduced the value of contract service.

What keeps most customers coming back to another two-year contract is the chance to grab the hottest new smartphone at a discount. But consumers ultimately pay back whatever they have saved in higher fees over the life of the contract, which may make buying your own device at full price a better value with a no-contract plan.

AT&T has announced it has launched its new stolen phone database that offers customers a chance to report and block stolen wireless equipment, with the hope it will deter would-be thieves.

AT&T has been criticized in the past for allowing stolen phones back onto its network, but now customers can add their stolen or missing equipment to a national database that will prevent the phones from being reactivated with other GSM carriers (primarily T-Mobile).

AT&T said customers can report stolen phones and suspend service via att.com/stolenphone, at an AT&T store, or by contacting customer service. AT&T will block the device within 24 hours, the carrier said.

Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and T-Mobile activated their databases earlier.