The 92-year-old from California was personally visited by Director Cox

Their Cox email addresses end with the @cox.net suffix. Many people use these addresses for banking, connecting online with utility providers, or logging into websites such as Medicare, Social Security, and Amazon.com.

However, in April, Cox exited the email support business. Moved all remaining @cox.net email addresses to Yahoo Mail, which now supports addresses ending in @cox.net. The suffix has not changed, although the email provider has changed.

The main issue for three customers I spoke to was that their @cox.net email contacts did not migrate during the migration. And now they can’t remember all their previous contacts.

Chris Duncan, owner of Vinton Computer and Brambleton Computer, said his stores were repeatedly visited by frustrated Cox customers looking for a solution. And when the column appeared, I heard from many others.

This problem is not just local. This is true in other states as well – Cox operates in at least 18. In some of them, such as Nevada, Arizona and Georgia, Cox dominates the market. This may explain why The Washington Post ran an article about Cox-Yahoo email migration problems in its June 7 issue.

The headline was, “How a 92-Year-Old Woman Beat the Cable Company (With a Little Help).” The client was Loretta Huckabone, who lives independently in San Diego, California. The article was written by Shira Ovide, who covers technology at the Post.

“Huckabone and her son said they worked for days deciphering instructions, juggling passwords and fiddling with access settings for Huckabone’s new Yahoo account. They tried to get help from Cox or Yahoo.

“It was so frustrating that Huckabone considered giving up email. “I felt like I could make it in life, but technology was an area I just couldn’t cope with,” Huckabone was quoted as saying in the article.

Her son worked all day on the Huckabone problem, remotely from Northern California. He finally managed to get his mom’s email up and running on her Apple computer. But he couldn’t get it to work on Huckabone’s iPad.

After Ovide informed Cox of Huckabone’s problem, Cox’s chief operating officer and a Cox technician personally visited Huckabone’s home. The principal apologized and a technician was able to resolve Huckabone’s email issues, Ovide wrote.

The article ended with Huckabone saying she was grateful for Cox’s home visit. But “she was concerned about people who didn’t have a strong son or the Washington Post to support them.”

Here in Roanoke, where Cox Communications has refused to answer my questions, I quickly make a list of these other people.

“We used to have 3 Cox accounts: 2 home and 1 business,” he wrote Butch Johnstoneliving in the Hollins area of ​​Roanoke County.

“After seeing most people switch to Glo (fiber) and hearing Cox discourage me from switching to fiber, we chose Glo in early 2023. Cox then canceled our email addresses even though he had 2 other accounts, including a business one. Yes, it will take (at least) Christmas to switch over your entire life associated with these email addresses.”

Another is Lynn Bryant Roanoke County.

“You can add me to your list of VERY dissatisfied users,” she wrote. “I have been a Cox customer for over 20 years and don’t want to change my email address, so I moved to Yahoo. Like other people you interviewed, my contact list has not been transferred.”

This wasn’t a big problem for Bryant’s regular correspondence with friends whose email addresses were stored separately on her phone and/or iPad.

“However, I only used the desktop computer to correspond with about 60 people from the mission group I co-lead.

“Even after spending about 3 hours on the phone with Cox computer experts, I no longer have that contact list and cannot recreate it. I’m beyond nervous. … Shame on Cox for doing this to us.”

On the phone Monday, Bryant told me she was able to find her old Cox.net contacts for the mission group on her desktop computer by opening Outlook. She added that the process of transferring these contacts to Yahoo was tedious.

One by one, “I manually copied them all and put them in my new Yahoo email contact list.” She added that it lasted “a long time, probably a whole day, one day. Very annoying.”

Paweł Willard said he kept his @cox.net email address when he moved from Roanoke to New Kent County, east of Richmond.

“I made the transition, but now I’m inundated with spam and ads. This is pure mess,” Willard wrote.

“Although people can still contact me via Cox’s email, I am very dissatisfied with him. Internet and cable TV are expensive, so I’m considering other options. … Perhaps a solution would be to advise our local governments to exercise greater due diligence when signing long-term cable TV contracts.”

Harry Surratt from Roanoke County began his email to you with, “I enjoyed reading your article on the mess (Cox mail migration).” But Surratt isn’t too happy about his new Yahoo email.

“Everything your authors of this article said is true and then some,” Surratt added. “There were a few features in my previous email service that weren’t available in Yahoo. Please continue to harass these corporate idiots and help hold them accountable.”

Karen Vietmeier in Roanoke County included three words in her email about the Cox-Yahoo email migration: “What a mess.”

She added: “Cox should at least tell customers how to save address books to their data file. Most of us wouldn’t think about this, even if we used a program on our computer such as Microsoft Outlook for email.

“Needless to say, I love people wasting hours trying to get my email address back. I gave up and started using my little-used Gmail account. I decided to only contact my most important accounts and made the change,” Vietmeier wrote.

She also offered the following advice: “As a senior, if you’re having trouble making these changes, ask a family member or close friend for help,” she added. “If you want to ensure your security is maintained, change your password once the assistant has finished helping you.

“I didn’t realize I was receiving so many emails a day for the last few years because Cox removed their spam filters,” Vietmeier added. “I was getting between 50 and 100 a day and I’m retired, so there were no work-related emails. Now I don’t get any!”

Vietmeier concluded: “My encouragement to seniors: Ditch Cox or Yahoo and go to Gmail. It is worth making the effort and making a change.”

Thank you readers for all your emails, phone calls and other feedback. Please don’t stop.