Oxio: Worst Mistake Ever
Published at 17:35 on 26 October 2026
I have Telus internet service, which is rock-solid reliable but expensive and you have to call back every few years, threaten to leave, talk to retention, and get some crazy nonstandard temporary deal (that expires in a year or two) to get service that does not cost even more than the already expensive discounted special deal. Stupid and tiring. The idea of paying around $50/month for a straight deal was real tempting, so I decide to give it a whirl.
They ship me my equipment and I track its arrival. Eventually it arrives and I get the notice that my outlets should be live. So I plug the modem in and turn it on. Nothing. No signal at all. It goes through a power-up light show and eventually settles into a flashing green “no signal” state.
So I try the other cable outlet in the house. Same story. I have several 75-ohm coax patch cables, so I try a different cable. Same story. Different cable, other outlet, still dead. At that point I try to talk to support.
Except Oxio doesn’t have customer support people, so far as I have been able to tell. Just an AI chatbot. One of the worst chatbots I have seen, in fact. Slow, buggy, unreliable, keeps asking for the same information over and over.
Eventually it asks me if I’ve tried pushing the recessed reset button on my modem. I haven’t, so I try that. Fifteen minutes later I come back to realize that my chat session has expired due to being inactive for more than ten minutes. Have I mentioned yet that it takes 10 minutes minimum to reset a modem, because the instructions Oxio gives says to wait 10 minutes after pushing the reset button?
So I start a new chat session, this time via SMS. Easily the worst SMS chatbot I have ever used. About half of my SMS messages fail to get delivered. When they get delivered, it is super ultra slow to respond. Eventually I get a canned message saying they are real busy and will SMS me back. They never do.
Then the next day I notice a response from Oxio in my spam email inbox. They had responded by email, not SMS as promised. I respond to that message, and get the same g-d- chatbot that starts asking me the same basic information all over again (province, email address, full name, account number, etc.).
That’s it, I’ve seen enough. That was last Friday evening and I put returning my equipment and cancelling my service on today’s agenda: I have seen enough. I don’t want to deal with Oxio anymore. It is worth putting up with Telus to get service that actually materializes and humans I can actually talk to.
Except of course it’s the same g-d- chatbot. Which, of course, is “busy” and “will get back to me later.” Because of course. I am never allowed more than a 10 minute delay, but they feel entitled to hours of delay.
I can see where this ends up: a billing dispute. Because I am not going to pay Oxio one red cent more. Let them send me to collections and start calling me back. Oh, I’m going to try avoid getting to that stage, but I’m pretty sure it will get there anyhow, because talking to a real person and getting any issue resolved seems impossible. I’m also taking screenshots and a journal in case I have to take them to court.
Ugh. Worst mistake I have made in many years.