It’s not often that I complain about something. I’m afraid I’m not really the activist type, but this one really has my undies in a bunch.

I live in Ladera Ranch which has a master contract with Cox Cable to provide Internet access to the entire community, a very cool idea except the contract is with Cox Cable. A portion of my HOA dues pays Cox every month. This is a master contract covering over 3000 homes. I’m sure Cox is giving us a great discount hoping that we will buy their phone and cable TV services as well.

All was well until about three months ago when the “geniuses” at Cox decided that they should fight spam by eating our outgoing emails. Now, I understand intercepting spam coming to me. However, intercepting emails to my clients and friends? Come on…give me a break.

At least they now give you notice that they are not delivering your mail. In Outlook it’s a nice box that comes up to tell you that the email has been blocked. For three months, I still have no idea what emails were actually sent and what wasn’t.

I spent a half a day trying to get the bottom of this through Cox’s technical support group which had no idea what I was talking about until I finally got a level 2 support guy on the phone. He confirmed that “Yes, Cox had a new spam filter on outgoing email. Further, if I wanted to get rid of it I could buy a business account from them which does not have the outgoing spam service.”

Of course, when I complained to the HOA they had no idea what was going on. They were nice enough to tell me that they would talk to the account rep. Nothing happened.

In conclusion, if you are in South Orange County and are using Cox as you Internet service provider. I would recommend two courses of action.

1. Call techical support. Ask for a level two agent. They will tell you that you can’t talk to them. Push really hard. Cox’s level one support would have trouble setting up Outlook Express. They are reading a list of instructions from their screen. When you don’t get satisfaction from level two, ask for the supervisor. I figure that if enough of us call. They are spending support dollars and it may dawn on them what a bad business decision this is.

2. Call sales and talk to them about canceling you service.

Money talks usually…however since Cox is a monopoly in South Orange County they may not care.

The good news is there are lots of other service providers that don’t spam filter your sent mail.

Please feel free to comment…