BellSouth’s Sneaky DSL Price Drop
Tip It!Last month a friend told me about an e-mail that he received from BellSouth regarding his FastAccess DSL service. They had written to offer him a ‘free’ upgrade from DSL Ultra @ 1.5 MBPS to DSL Extreme @ 3 MBPS. Alternatively, he could stick with DSL Ultra and get a $10/month price break. As a BellSouth DSL customer, I was very interested to hear about this. While I never received a similar message myself, I was recently able to follow up on this offer based on the information contained within his e-mail.
After clicking the link and entering my phone number, I was surprised to find that my only option was to keep the same level of service and remain at the same price point, or downgrade to DSL Lite and knock a few bucks off my bill. There was no upgrade option, and no mention of the $10/month decrease for sticking with DSL Ultra. But when I checked, I found that the rates for new customers had been adjusted downward as detailed in the offer e-mail. When I called the number listed in the e-mail, I was informed that I wasn’t offered the upgrade because my neighborhood doesn’t yet support DSL Extreme. That makes sense, but why wasn’t I informed of the price drop? When I asked about this, the CSR didn’t have a good response, but he did agree to drop our rate.
There are a couple of things about this that don’t sit well with me… First off, they’re offering to either upgrade your service or cut your price, but they fail to make clear that the default action on their part is to do nothing. If you don’t follow up on this e-mail, you keep the old level of service at the old price. Second, if you’re not in an area that supports the higher speed connection, you won’t be hearing about the price cut even though you’re eligible for it. So…
If you’re a BellSouth FastAccess DSL customer, be sure that you’re getting the best price (or service) possible. DSL Ultra customers should now be paying $32.95/month (down from $42.95/month) for 1.5 MBPS service, with DSL Extreme customers paying $42.95/month for 3 MBPS service. You can check/upgrade your service online by going here, or you can call BellSouth at 888-899-4489.
Published on October 21st, 2005 - 4 Comments
Filed under: Miscellany
About the author: Nickel is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!
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October 21st, 2005 at 7:20 pm
man $10 off is awesome.
I really would consider DSL but its not available in my area at all.. so expensive cable it is. even though its ridiculously fast (I get 5-6 MBPS, TimeWarner Road Runner recently upped it)
the thing about DSL is.. I really hate those Westell DSL modem/router that Verzion and Bellsouth sends out.
my gf kept requesting a regular modem without any router function, but they kept sending the Westell one anyway.
sheesh!
November 1st, 2005 at 1:34 pm
I’m a bellsouth customer, too, and I called to make sure they were applying the discount (I am an Ultra). They told me it had already been applied and I was being retroactively discounted for the 2 weeks after the rate drop. My next bill was really low- I don’t think my phone call sparked the discount, but who knows?
November 2nd, 2005 at 1:52 pm
If you call Bellsouth and say you’re thinking of leaving, they will give you the new price plus 6 months at $17.95.
November 3rd, 2005 at 1:30 pm
Anybody know anything about Qwest? I have their DSL and pay 29.95 + fees. Total is about $34. Couldn’t tell you what speed or what type of modem I have. But web pages load nearly as fast as with a cable connection. I’ve always been happy with it.