Complaint Review: CBCS - BELLSOUTH - Columbus Ohio

James, you stated, "Occasionally the service worked as promised. Most of the time it did not, and I had to spend several hours every week trying to get the service to operate as stated." What was your perception of how the service was to work, and how did it not work? As Jennifer has pointed out, DSL is a best-effort service and there are no speed guarantees for standard service. BellSouth as well as other DSL providers do offer guaranteed speeds. In these cases they have to condition the cable, and the monthly cost for this type service is much higher. Also, if speed was the problem, their are other factors, such as slow servers, multiple access to same web site, etc that affect throughput, but have nothing to do with the DSL service. Not saying the DSL service itself didn't have a problem, but you have not made a case that it was the problem.

Jennifer, this is a very well composed consumer response! I could not have done it better!

Is BellSouth charging you for the modem or early term fees or both? According to their "Terms and Conditions" which you had to accept when you activated the service, if you cancel within 12 months, you will be charged for an early term fee. Also, if you cancel between months 1-6 and return the modem, you will not be charged for it, between months 7-12, you will be charged 50%. It also states, that there is no guarantee that the service will work as described, ie: speed, and that they are not liable if it does not. The only thing they are liable for is to issue you a credit if your service is down for more than 24 hours. This is pretty standard across all the carriers. I provision DSL all over the country from all the major and some minor carriers. None will guarantee speed. If you subscribed to 1.5M X 384K, there is no guarantee you will get it. The speed you get is determined by a number of things, first and foremost, distance from the CO. The further you are from the Central Office, the greater the possibility that your speed will be reduced. You may get full speed sometimes but not all the time. There are several websites you can go to and enter your address to see how far you are from the CO. Even cable companies do not guarantee speed but rather advertise speeds up to...blah, blah, blah. One more question, were these charges on your bill and you chose not to pay them each month or did they just hit you with a collection agency a few years later? If they were on your bill and you did not choose to dispute them, you may be out of luck legally. (I'm not a lawyer) The carriers will take disputed charges all the way up to binding arbitration. If they never notified you of the charges and then just all of a sudden sent them to collections, you may have a chance. (again, not a lawyer) And for those folks out there who I'm sure will say it, I don't work for BellSouth, never worked for BellSouth, my husband does not work for BellSouth. I've never worked for any major carrier. I'm a Telecommunications Analyst, contracted to a major, nationwide employment service to provision DSL for their offices.

A collection agency can legally call you until 9pm, any day of the week. The FDCPA says that a collector can call between the hours of 8am and 9pm. That goes by your time zone, so an agency in California can not call you at 9pm their time, as that would be way too late to speak to you. Also, generally most collectors will not sue over a balance under $1000. It is not financially viable. I have seen legal efforts made for balances under $1000, but they were special cicumstances.