Hosed on my DSL bill!

sarlen · Post by **sarlen** » December 8, 2006, 9:01 pm

So I was finally tired of everything I do on line coming to a halt if someone else in the house opens a web site or listens to streaming music so I called the provider to get my connection upped from 256k to 768k. After the phone tree from hell I get to talk to a rep and after I ask to have it bumped up he says "you sure you want 768? cause I can give you 1.5 for less then your paying now". So I ask, how long have I paid way to much for this crappy 256 when I could have had a 1.5.... oh only a year!! Then he tells me all I have to do is call in about once a year and the price would go down or the speed will go up (wish I knew that sooner).

Call your provider folks and beat a better price or connection out of them.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 8, 2006, 9:56 pm

That blows. With Cox Cable, you don't get screwed like that. The speed upgrades are automatic.

I've seen that same thing happen with cell phone packages. They lower the rate or times but you don't get them unless you sign another 1-2 year deal. Lame stuff.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » December 8, 2006, 10:09 pm

I wouldn't say you were really hosed... A little customer awareness goes a long way. If you sign up for a certain plan it makes no sense they'd automatically change it.

Hesten · Post by **Hesten** » December 8, 2006, 10:49 pm

Ahh, i just love having an IPS that send me cute letters with stuff like "we wont lower your price, but we doubled your band with staring next month"

ATM im waiting for my new 20 mbit line, should get 4 mbit on the first of january, and be upped to 20 as soon as its ready in my area, somewhere in Q1 2007. Still only 512 up though, could get 1 mbit up if i paid 10$ more, dont think its worth that

Neost · Post by **Neost** » December 12, 2006, 11:52 am

I called at&t (formerly sbc) yesterday because i noticed my dsl had doubled from teh previous months bill.

I was on the dsl pro plan, 1.5mb down/512kb up for 24.95 a month and it had reached the end of the 1 year committment. The price jumped, but they told me that I would get a credit next month which would drop it back down to the 24.95 rate and continue at the 24.95 rate unless I changed plans.

That's when they launced into their new plan structure, and I was able to get the elite plan at 34.95 a month for 6mb down, up to 768kb up.

Probably the best way to bring to my attention new plans is to charge me that one month double rate at the end of the year commitment. Certainly got my attention, thus the call to see what's up.

Deward · Post by **Deward** » December 12, 2006, 12:14 pm

I just switched to DSL. I got tired of Cable raising my rates and since I don;t game online anymore I can get by with 1.5MB. The difference in price is worth it. Cable @ 3MBps was $49/month, DSL @ 1.5MBps is $2.95/month for first 6 months and then $19.95/month. Really a no brainer.

archeiron · Post by **archeiron** » December 12, 2006, 11:44 pm

I ran a test at http://www.speedtest.net and found that my download speed was around 1.8mbps, so I rang my cable company to find out if they could offer me an upgrade. The rep told me that I was already at 6mbps for downloads from a silent upgrade 3mo back. When I told her that I had tested my connection and it wasn't anywhere near that fast, she put me on hold and then transferred me to tech support. They fed me some BS about my router dropping my speed by as much as 4x as being normal and suggested that I run a test later that day without my router.

I just retested my connection at 4.5mbps, so I suspect that the "silent upgrade" really took place when I called in.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 13, 2006, 12:01 am

archeiron wrote:I ran a test at http://www.speedtest.net and found that my download speed was around 1.8mbps, so I rang my cable company to find out if they could offer me an upgrade. The rep told me that I was already at 6mbps for downloads from a silent upgrade 3mo back. When I told her that I had tested my connection and it wasn't anywhere near that fast, she put me on hold and then transferred me to tech support. They fed me some BS about my router dropping my speed by as much as 4x as being normal and suggested that I run a test later that day without my router.

I just retested my connection at 4.5mbps, so I suspect that the "silent upgrade" really took place when I called in.

Speed does vary during the day, location, and depending on network load, etc. I always get fast speeds from giganews:

http://www.giganews.com/test_connect.html

Although I can only get about 6mbps out of the test above, that's just one connection. I max my 12mbps with 4 connections to their server but usually run 10 for efficiency.

I get 11Mbps+ from this test every time and 1.1+Mbps up

http://test.lvcm.com/

(just refresh the page if you want to retest a few times)

Some other locations:

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

The only way I can really test my bandwidth is using multiple pipes on giganews servers because I know they will almost always give me the maximum bandwidth my service provides.

This Virginia One only gave me ~5Mbps

http://myspeed.visualware.com/index.html