Chapter 3 in my continuing DSL upgrade saga. Chapter 2 saw our intrepid hero trapped in bureaucratic hell, unable to move forward to a higher speed without canceling the current service and waiting for Verizon to re-install the new service. Since I wasn’t looking forward to 2 weeks without service, I decided to wait a while before cancelling my service.

Silly me. I assumed that, because they’d cancelled the upgrade, they wouldn’t keep billing me for the new service. No such luck; my bill has been $10 higher then it should have been for the last three months. I called once before and they claimed that they’d fixed it, but my bills haven’t reflected any change. So I called again, and was informed that I’m stuck with the new rate. Since they no longer offer my old rate, they can’t give it back to me. Typical Verizon. I was starting to warm up my “can I speak to a supervisor” speech when the rep surprised me and offered a credit for a month’s free service. After doing a bit of bit of quick math, as long as I cancel my current service within the next 5 months, I come out ahead with the credit. So, I now have a deadline running–cancel my current frame-relay-based DSL service before the end of the year, or end up paying extra for service that I’m not receiving.

Hmm. If they charge me for a new DSL modem, I wonder if I’m better off returning it for credit and getting a Sangoma S518 instead. A couple people on the asterisk-users mailing list have had really good luck with it, because it lets you do more reliable traffic shaping on your Linux box, rather then play games with the buffers on the DSL modem. It’s probably not worth the hassle, though.