Two words: satellite TV

Basically, what they do is cancel the account under her name, and begin a new account with a new account number, under yours. If the fees are standard fees for new customers, this isn't surprising. Unnecessary, yes. Surprising, no. Incidentally, they could care less who *pays* the bill, as long as it gets paid, so switching it in the first place was unnecessary.

Cox is one of the most ridiculous companies I've ever had to deal with. I keep trying to switch to AT&T for cable/internet, but it's like they're actively trying to keep customers away...

My current Cox bill for basic non-digital 70-channel cable and cable internet is $101 - they've had an essential monopoly on this town for years. AT&T just started offering service recently.

I'm guessing that if the wife had changed her name on the account, since she was married and it legally changed, there would have been no charges. Obviously, that's not what they wanted but my point is I bet they would have done it without the fees for her. So, why charge it for anyone?

I remember many moons ago my cellphone company in Canada charged me $25 for, of all things, CHANGING MY PHONE NUMBER.

Maybe he could ask to add his name to the account. Then call and have his wife's name removed?

Tell them to email bill.geppert@cox.com - their system's general manager.

I emailed the Phoenix GM on something and got results.

[www.multichannel.com]

@dragonfire81: that seems legit to me. I'm not being sarcastic either. If changing your number were free a certain class of person would find the need to change their number constantly (ditch bill collectors? ex-girlfriends?)

I believe they keep the old number active for some time (at least a month, but probably longer) if you elect to have the little recording directing people to your new number. Otherwise they keep the number off the market for some period of time to hopefully rid it of wrong-number calls.

Sigh just another example of deregulation in action. Its not like there are a lot of options (area cable monopoly X, satellite monopoly X, or telco monopoly Z) all of whom essentially operate the same way. Its like the credits card companies that pretend to compete but that is just service noise so they can all equally screw you with service charges and high interest rates.

I know I'll probably get crucified for saying so, but this is one time when I think Comcast actually had a good policy.

In regards to name changes, the procedure (at least the one in Charleston, SC where I worked; Because Comcast has built its size by acquisition, and not organically, it's tough to judge if this is the case everywhere) was for both parties to go to the local office with Photo ID and they would change the account over from one party to the other for something like $3.99 (about the cost of labor for the service provided). The reason behind this was that it protected all parties involved. Comcast was protected from liability because all parties presented photo ID and signed off on the change of ownership of the service and the customers were protected because it meant that nobody could just call in and change service to somebody else's name.

I'm sure somebody will fin a problem with this system, but I think it's a time when Comcast got things right when implementing a policy.

I wonder if he can cancel the service and then repurchase it later. I know some people who have had luck by canceling the cable service for a week or two and then singing back up for the specials. I might look at Dish or Direct TV too as an alternative. By the way Verizon brought FIOS to my area and it has been a Godsend. Comcast has been very generous in matching prices and has improved their service.

@tgrwillki: Four dollars and proof of id is a far cry from 40 dollars, without notice.

@pgh9fan1: Not the best option for some Cox customers. I have Cox (unfortunately), but if I went satellite, they wouldn't have HD locals. I also can't get them OTA with an antenna, because I'm in rural southwest Kansas (also unfortunate), too far out to receive CBS and FOX.

I'd love to have satellite, but I can't without sacrificing HD.

@pgh9fan1: Satellite TV?

Like DirecTV?

What about it?

I don't know who told you that but it's incorrect. If any of the consumerst folks could ask the poster to contact me at hrd-hsi.newsgroups@cox.com I'll get this straightened out for them. Or the can also twitter CoxTECH1 if they want to.

-CoxTOC1

I would bet he talked to a sales rep who started a new account to make commission.

@TEW: Word. If hubby is not in the system, live without cable TV for a few months. It can be done! Then approach Cox anew as a new subscriber a few months from now, and angle for the best deal they offer.

I set up my father's Cox service for his home near Tulsa. (My stepmom wanted me to set up high-speed Internet for him, without involving him, and then we told him after the fact). I put it in my name, giving Cox my address and SS# for the credit check and my cell phone as the contact number.
He got all cheap on the long distance, switching from the local Bell's POTS to VoIP through TomatoVine and later Vonage. Both sucked, and blamed Cox for the suckage.
He kept complaining about the terrible quality, so I got him to add Cox phone service (which is pretty good) to my cable Internet hookup at his house. He had to give the last four digits of my SS# to make that happen, and he wasn't really comfortable with the arrangement.
We went to the Cox office together last summer to try to switch it over, but they made it impossible: they wanted to discontinue my service on the spot, and then create a new service for him. They said he would have no dial tone for "several business days," and they couldn't promise that he would keep his same phone number.
They claimed it was due to FCC regulations, because there was phone service on the account.

Needless to say, I still have a Cox account in Oklahoma. Too bad I live in Delaware.

Verizon is the same way. After my wife passed away, I tried to get her name removed from the account. Verizon claims that the only way to completely remove her name is to disconnect service and order new service. So instead every time I login to their website to check on my account, pay my bill, I am greeted with a wonderful "Hello Stacey!" Thanks Verizon for the constant reminder that I became a widower in my 30s.

@jenn7110: I hate to be picky, but they couldn't care less. Couldn't.

@tgrwillki: How is even charging $3.99 justified to cover "the cost of labor for the service provided"?? Don't the people who work at Cox already get paid just for working there? They don't get paid per transaction, do they? Dumb.

I wonder if he could get any of the new account benefits, like free HBO for six months or whatever. If he paid for the new account in a "new" person's name, he should get the benefits.

My disdain for Cox Cable stems from the weeks I spent as a temporary customer service rep for them. Call volume was high, but the company's hired so few reps that customers were waiting online sometimes for hours to talk to us. I'd literally get calls from people who only wanted to talk to me in order to prove that, yes, if they waited on hold for three hours, they'd finally get through to a live person.

I moved from a house to an apartment. The Cox website has a link for setting up your move to have your services moved with you. Guess what? They cancel your account, and you start all over again. Nothing transferred, not even the email addresses. I'm surprised they didn't charge me for the new account.

@kingdom2000: How is this deregulation in action? I don't know about where you live, but where I live they award cable franchises, and I have no choice but to use Comcast for cable. If I still had a land line, I'd be tied to Qwest...

@catchthefever: Yeah, I had this happen one time with Comcast and at the time they said they couldn't give me the same email address. I asked them what would happen to the old one, and they said it would be deactivated and removed from the system. I said, ok, then give me that one back. No, they couldn't - once an email address had been used, it could never be used ever again even if all you did was move addresses.

I'm sure they've fixed that now, but at the time it was so ridiculous that no one anywhere in their company had ever thought that someone might move and want to keep the same email address.

@kingdom2000:
I am sorry but I don't see how this is deregulation in action. Verizon had to lobby very hard so they could offer television service in my area. Comcast fought tooth and nail to keep them out so they would not have competition. Now you can pit the two against each other and you end up wining. The service has gotten better too because there is a choice. If anything having only Cox as a choice is the prime example of a regulated industry.

@tptcat: if they could care less, they would.

I had a similar experience with an AT&T cell phone a few years back. I was moving to an area where AT&T couldn't give me a local number, so I attempted to cancel it, which they told me I couldn't do because I was under contract. I found someone willing to take it over, and called AT&T to have it transferred. They did so but billed me for a full month (I was about 10 days that month when they transferred the service), they charged the lady I transferred it to for a full month (even though she only used it 20 days out of that month) and on top of it all they charged us both a $50 "reassignment" fee and put her under a 2-year contract.

On hindsight, I had 3 months left, at minimum plan it was $14.something a month. It would have been cheaper to switch the plan and throw the phone in a drawer.

@tptcat:

Thank you; this is a pet peeve of mine as well.

Their accounting information is running off databases that are about a decade old. Or at least they were when I stopped working technical support for them about 5 or so years ago. We had the same problems with this back then so it sounds like nothing has changed. 15 year old software by now.

Great stuff!

Years ago I was a csr for Cox in San Diego. Back then it was $20 to transfer ownership of an account to another person. But as far as I remember, there was never any disconnect/reconnect. It was really just a service fee. And yes, I hated trying to explain that to the customers.

@dragonfire81: How is this unreasonable? They had to use up one more number from their pool of available numbers, then they had to hold your own number for a time before releasing it back into said pool.. If you didn't charge something for the administration of such things, people would be constantly hopping numbers for whatever reason.

I really feel this doesn't warrant a complaint, much less one that uses all caps for four concurrent words.

@Mike8813: Never mind that, just say "Satellite TV" to Cox and see if they make any sort of moves to fix the problem.

HD locals are a touch sketchy at the moment by satellite, depending on where you live. Our OP, however, might not have problems with OTA HD.

Gosh don't you love "Activation Fees"??? I think they are also known as "Pay Us For The Privledge of Becomming A Customer Fees". Nuts!

What a racket those are! See how Target or Wal-Mart would do tacking on $1 to each sale as a "Experience Fee" to covers lights in the store.

@jenn7110: Yep my cable is in my mother in laws name (so we could get the discounted package) and she's never actually paid the bill and doesn't even live in the country anymore

That's probably why they want to do the name change here, the rates went up on her name so they changed to his name to get the discount again.

@TEW: Yeah, but you still have monitored network, slower sustained speeds and crappy video quality. Just do the right thing and ditch Comcrap already.

@twophrasebark: Yeah, but if that's possible why didn't Cox just do that themselves instead of disconnecting and reconnecting the service?

@MBEmom: One possibility is since they changed the bill to someone with a different last name, they may have figured she moved out and he was a new tenant trying to get cable without the activation fee.

I hate these fees, and generally do everything I can to avoid paying them. That said, it's totally within their rights to charge them. If people don't like the fees, they should find another service provider. Obviously Cox and other cable providers are in the business for profit, and it costs them money to staff a call center in order to provide services such as changing the name on an account. They should be expected to want to recover those costs.

That said, charging a fee that isn't properly disclosed is reprehensible. I hate CSRs who are too lazy or timid to tell people that they're going to be charged a fee for making a change, especially when it's not a common change. Many CSRs simply don't want to deal with an angry customer when they disclose that it's going to cost $40 to do what they want, so they just don't tell the customer. In the CSR's eyes, the guy will get the bill in a month and call back angry, but the chances of him getting the same CSR are usually pretty slim. Most of the time, supervisors at call centers won't tolerate failure to disclose fees, as it generates angry calls for them. Call Cox, demand a supervisor and point out that you weren't told about the charge. They'll probably take it off.

@serreca: I think $3.99 is perfectly reasonable. Just because they're already being paid to work there doesn't mean you should get everything for free.

@Canino: Which is why I use Gmail. My email will never change. I can not even tell you the email address on my Bellsouth/AT&T DSL. I have never checked it. When I move or change internet providers, I do not worry about my email.

@SMSDHubbard: Oh no!!! ALL CAPS!!! THE HORROR!!!!!!!!

@PLATTWORX: Isn't that called Sam's Club?

my bank wants $40 to change the name on my mortgage. i'm the same person, i just got married and changed my name. as far as i know, there is nothing in a mortgage to "connect" and "disconnect".

So how do they fix the account if they made a typo in your name and you ask to have it changed? Do they charge $40 for that as well?

@Brent: at least you speak english. No one at Cox that I've spoken to in the last few years is from or even located in this country.

That shouldn't happen, you should be able to get that fixed without that fee, I was able to.

Time Warner Cable does that same bull but they charge $25 to change the name. Seriously I never understood why the hell there is a fee? It takes two seconds to change the name? I mean on my all other utilities, I can change it willy-nilly without fees.