I got a termination notice from Centurylink today that my DSL service is being cancelled. The letter said this was my third warning and I would be disconnected on March 27th. I've been a Centurylink customer for 9 months at this point.
I'll start by saying I'm 100% guilty of exceeding the usage policy. I've exceeded it quite a bit every month I've been with Centurylink. I'm a heavy user and I was aware this may be a problem, so I did opt for the fastest speed Internet I could to get the largest data cap available for residential service. I also searched Centurylink for a data monitor tool in my account settings or something and could not find it. I came here and learned there was no such tool (at the time, not sure about today). With my previous ISP they had a data cap, but it was not enforced, I made the assumption that Centurylink is probably not enforcing this as well in light of them not providing the monitoring tool (my last ISP even had this).
About 2 months into my new service with Centurylink someone in the house mentioned they were seeing a strange page in their browser window. They though it might have been some scam or malware. Turned out it was a Centurylink notice warning me I was in violation of the excessive usage policy. This was about 6 months ago and I recall it explaining the policy, but I don't believe it mentioned anything about consequences.
I was a bit worried at first and tried to manage my usage a bit better. Even called Centurylink to find out how they calculate the data usage, is it from billing period to billing period or from the 1st of the month to the end of the month. They told me it's from the 1st to the end of the month. For probably the next couple months I still exceeded the usage policy but not as badly.
I didn't hear from Centurylink again and relaxed and fell back into my normal usage patterns. And then yesterday I got the termination notice.
It said this was my third warning. But I never received a second warning. However if that second warning arrived the same way, via a browser redirect, then it's entirely possible someone else in the house saw and ignored it. I never received a single warning via email to my primary email account or any email account I read. I never got a letter in the mail until the termination notice.
I'm a disappointed Centurylink didn't provide better communication of their concerns about my data usage. The first warning I admit I blew off and was still uncertain if it was a policy they were even enforcing. And the lack of any further communication on the subject just reinforced my belief that this wasn't an issue they were too concerned about. I do believe had I gotten that second warning I would have made a more serious attempt to ration my data usage better.
I called Centurylink yesterday to ask and express my concern about the lack of the second notice. I asked customer service about this and instead of answering the question he just ignored it and instead asked what I was doing to use so much data. That surprised me and I reminded him that it was none of his business (I didn't ask him for help managing my data). Unfortunately I forgot to repeat my question and never got an answer as to why I never saw the second notice or how Centurylink normally handles notifications about excessive usage. I'll probably call them again to find out.
To wrap up. I'm guilty as heck and I understand I violated the rules and have to suffer the consequences. But I think Centurylink needs to do better as well. If they are enforcing this usage policy then I think they absolutely should provide a tool on the account page for customers to check their usage. And I would have really liked to have gotten email and written notification, at least one of them. That browser redirect warning is too easy to miss if it doesn't show up while I'm at home. I do believe this is a situation we might have been able to resolve and they could have kept me as a customer had the communication been better.
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