I'm the Cable Guy!!!!!!
Written: Nov 29 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Bundling of services, great entertainment value. 24/7 service
Cons: none Come to mind
|
|
|
| Bruguru's Full Review: Cox |
Veteran readers of my Epinions reviews will perhaps recall that I have in the past written reviews about banking from an insider’s perspective. I worked in banking for several years, and this helped me gain an appreciation for the complex procedures at play that help you buy a house, get a credit card, write a check, or use an ATM. Though most of us complain about the fees we get charged at the bank, we don’t always stop to realize that the bank has employees to pay, expenses to cover, and like any business, profits to make.
I’m no longer the bank guy. I’m now the cable guy. I work for Cox Communications, and if you live in Connecticut or Rhode Island and call about your cable service, it just may be my friendly voice you hear on the other end of your phone. Just as I was an advocate for the banking industry, I’m now going to try to give you a little insight into the cable business, hopefully giving you an appreciation of the costs associated with delivering so many channels to your television set.
Cox treats their employees well. We receive a competitive base salary plus commissions, and they spoil us with little extras like free cable. There’s a reason for this. They want us to be happy in our jobs, so that we will provide the customer with the top-notch service he or she deserves. I am very impressed with Cox’s commitment to great customer care.
Providing the many communications services Cox provides costs money. First of all, of course, is the programming itself. The many channels you enjoy are received via satellite relay from their source and then transmitted across cables that stretch for miles and miles and miles. It never ceases to amaze me how we take for granted the Herculean effort involved in laying cables (or telephone and electric lines for that matter) through incredibly large areas, and then maintaining them once they are up. Fleets of trucks and armies of technicians are necessary to accomplish this, and they cost money.
Cox has been upgrading their cable systems to fiber optics for some time now, and has completed this in many areas. This means more and better services for the customer. Cox pioneered a system called ring in ring that utilizes circles of fiber optic cable that surround huge areas, with progressively smaller belts of fiber optics inside to provide greatest possible reliability.
Ok, you say, enough of all this. What’s in it for me? First of all, lots of entertainment value for your dollar. For about $35 a month in many areas, You’ll receive up to 78 channels including your local network affiliates and favorites such as The History Channel, Discovery Channel, CNN, Cartoon Network, A&E, Nickelodeon, and many, many more. Let’s take it a little further however. Digital cable costs about $8 additional a month, and adds 20 more channels. You also get music choice, which can be run to your stereo and provides CD-quality, commercial free music in just about every style. Throw on HBO with your digital for another $11 and you’ll get eight channels of that service, increasing the chances considerably that you’ll find a movie you want to watch when you want to watch one. The Starsight programming menu makes finding what you want to watch easy, and makes selecting that program easy as pie. You can even order a Pay-Per-View movie or special event with the touch of a button on your remote. All for about $60 a month with converter and remote charges. It’s easy today to spend that on one trip out to the movie theatre.
In addition to cable services, Cox provides high-speed Internet service in many areas, and is beginning to offer telephone service as well at very competitive prices. The company offers greater value to it’s customers by bundling its services, or offering them at a better price if you select more than one of them. You can even receive one bill that covers your cable, Internet, and telephone services.
People tend to always think their cable bill is too high. I suspect that is in large part a function of the fact that many of us can remember getting it free through an antenna on the roof. Cable has much more to offer than your old aerial did however. The next time you look at your cable bill, stop and consider all the effort that goes into offering you so much more.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.