For the second time in as many months, some customers of AT&T;’s BellSouth.net broadband Internet service have been receiving e-mails late, multiple times or not at all.

The problem has affected subscribers in the company’s nine-state region and has left some wondering why BellSouth hasn’t told them about the problem.

The e-mail glitch was related to capacity in the company’s spam-filtering software and an “unexpected large volume of spam traffic over the past couple of days,” according to an e-mail response from AT&T; spokesman Joe Chandler. The problem should be corrected by Monday, he said.

The issue can affect any of the more than 3 million customers in BellSouth’s system, Chandler said. Although some customers reported they weren’t receiving some e-mails at all, the spokesman said the problem involved delayed messages.

In March, BellSouth customer David Raterman’s e-mail started acting strangely. Messages from business associates weren’t arriving. Others were arriving multiple times. It was resolved earlier this month, but then started again this week. He realized he had a problem when he didn’t get his advertisers’ responses to sample ads he had sent them by e-mail.

“I was in that awkward position of following up with a client, but you don’t want to appear overanxious,” said Raterman, editor and publisher of South Florida Adventures magazine in Fort Lauderdale.

The first e-mail problems in March were the result of bad computer coding, Chandler said at the time. That instance began March 23 and lasted almost two weeks.

During both e-mail glitches, BellSouth representatives answered subscriber questions about the problem, according to customers who contacted them. But unless customers asked, they weren’t informed of the e-mail difficulties, Chandler said.

Bryan Sklar, a BellSouth subscriber in Plantation, complained that BellSouth didn’t alert him via e-mail, the company’s iWay customer e-mail newsletter, or its Web site.

“Talk to me, that’s all I ask,” Sklar said. “It’s affecting business. It’s customer service. It’s affecting life.”

The April issue of iWay was created before the problem occurred, Chandler said. He also said that sending e-mails explaining the situation would have taxed an already strained system.

“The balance we look for is how to notify customers without contributing even more to the issue.”

BellSouth could learn from JetBlue, Sklar suggested. After the airline stranded customers on jets during a February snowstorm, its CEO came forth with explanations and apologies.

Public relations consultant Leonard Saffir of Lake Worth said a proactive response to customer issues is often best in crisis communications.

Not only would the company alert customers that it’s handling the issue, it also would ease the minds of customers like Saffir who suspect the problem is with them, not their e-mail provider, he said.

“The first thing I tell people to do is get the story out immediately,” Saffir said. “This way, you control the message and appear on top of things.”