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.