I got the same $5 a month increase told to me over the phone when I upgraded. Now the bill says $15 and the CSR's confirmed that.

Do not trust anything they say, get it in writing.

But it really doesn't matter anymore. I switched to Comcast yesterday. More speed at half the price and hopefully half the headaches.

When Qwest fist started offering the 7Mbps package in my area we were among the fist to have it. Qwest never had a problem delivering the 7Mbps package. Qwest in as state of Arizona was acquired by CenturyLink and in August we started receiving billing statements from CenturyLink.
In September I noticed that I had considerable lag when browsing the Internet. An array of speed tests from DSL Reports and CenturyLink randomly in September and in November shows my speed fluctuating between 3Mbps and 5Mbps. Sometimes it will even drop to less than 1.5Mbps.
I have called their tech support in reference to this issue twice, in September and recently in November. Both times the conclusion was arrived at that it was not my line or equipment but rather at the Central Office. They stated that they had to replace the equipment for our area at the CO and it would not take place until the beginning of the new year.
Today I called customer service to see about getting a credit. I was told that I was told that because there is no price difference between their 3Mbps, 5Mbps, and 7Mbps packages and therefore no credit. They do not offer 3-5Mbps packages in the state of Arizona. They only offer 1.5 - 7Mbps in my area of Arizona. At the same time the customer service representative was not able to pull up my account because their system was down for 3 hour with no eta when it will be back up.
So CenturyLink is Throttling all of the 7Mbps service in my area to between 3-5Mbps. Of course they will deny throttling because it is a nasty word they do not want to admit to.

Linuxpen, they are not throttling the service, at least not in my area. I'm getting the full 20mb service that I'm paying for but it's on a new fiber network that was just installed this summer. I was switched to that when they couldn't get the old 1.5mb service to work. I could never get any kind of DSL service at my house before CL took over and upgraded to the new fiber network. Like lots of other people you are trying to get high speed service over 50 year old phone lines that were never designed for that and are now so old they are starting to fail. If you can get even 1.5mb service that works consider yourself lucky until the service can be upgraded to new fiber cables in your area.

I diss agree. This problem is clearly the result of Caps or throttling behavior. Granted the lines are old Qwest had no problems delivering 7Mbps to this rural area. This area has never has fiber and I doubt they have plans to install fiber in the area. Though I can only be hopeful. Consider myself lucky? I do not think so. The only competitors in this area is dial-up, point-to-point microwave, and satellite services.

What is the distance from your house to the Central Office?