Landlord's provision of services

Overheal

Before I begin, I must declare, that I hereby waive any rights I may have previously had to sue or otherwise claim greivance with Boards.ie, and hereby acknowledge that I will not pursue any information produced by this thread as legal advice, and only regard it as the unaffiliated opinion of whatever anonymous individual may decide to post a response therein. [Basically, you're all off the hook if you say I should go on a killing spree or something...]



I have moved into an Apartment Block in Carlow called Riverbank, where there has been a strange goings-on.....

First off, when I was looking for accomodation for college, I used the IT Carlow Accomodation listing. In this, I found an ad from the Riverbank which included in its description, the "Unlimited use of broadband".

On their website, they then go on to say that "Broadband use, refuse and terrestrial TV incurs an additional 4 Euro weekly charge.." which basically means 16 Euros/mo. They also reiterate the use of the term "Unlimited".

Only after a day since I had moved in and had already signed my lease and filled out my Standing Order, I had to find out through my own accord (not being advised whatsoever) that there were indeed a multitude of restrictions, namely, connection to remote servers.
For those of you who don't know, connection to a remote server is required for quite a lot on the web: chat rooms, Skype, ventrillo (like Skype), and seemingly every video-game known to man (well, I am in a Games Development course, so its an issue :rolleyes: )

After speaking with the landlady, she said "We have had issues in the past with people 'over-using' the broadband connection, so we were forced to restrict access to such facilities". I have learned the issue she may have referred to may have been a LAN party held by years past, but I hardly see how this is relevant to me.

Anyway, my issue is this: I pay my rent, and that is the profit that they (ie. the investors) make on the property. I pay an extra 8 Euro a week for gas and electricity, and 4 Euro for broadband and my refuse and TV...I would hopefully assume that SINCE THESE ARE SEPERATELY ITEMISED that I would be getting my 16 Euros/mo worth of broadband (along with the refuse and TV). When there are over 70 tennants in the building paying that much per month, wouldn't it make sense to operate a higher-capacity connection, anyway? We certainly pay enough to afford one. If they want more profits, they can take it out of my rent, but if you're going to charge extra for a particular service, then provide it (or at least fully disclose the restriction to someone before they sign into any agreement!).

As far as the only to legal contracts I've signed (ie. The Lease and Rules of Conduct) are concerned, the facility of Broadband isn't ever adressed (but then neither is the fact that I don't get a telephone...which makes Skype important again) and the only close item in the lease states that tennants are "Not to overload any electrical equipment" which may include broadband, but I'm hardly convinced (that would be telecommunications, now would'nt it?)

The simple matter is that even if I wanted to, I couldn't "overload" my broadband connection if I tried, with the blocks on!!

for 16 Euros/mo for broadband, am I (and the other 70+ people in the complex) not entitled to our "Unlimited" use?

Avertisement of Apt: http://www.itcarlow.ie/facilities/downloads/selfcatering_030706.pdf
Apt website: www.redhillproperties.ie

hullaballoo

*Bump.*

Victor

"Unlimited use of broadband, Cable, TV, ESB & Refuse €12." Were there terms and conditions when you signed up? If not they with have to supply it or its false advertising.

padser

To be honest with you my feeling is that you are not entitled to anything. slightly mislead you may been but the add says 'unlimited use of broadband' rather then 'unrestricted' use.

As I would interpret it, you do have unlimited use since you can use it as often as you want for as long as you want. You simply cant access some of the features you want to.

There are two ways in which you could claim you to have been falsely advertised to.

1) if you could establish that use of the word 'unlimited' in relation to broadband normally means that there are no resrictions on the broadband such as you have outlined above, and not that you have unlimited time on the connection.

OR

2) That in using the term the 'broadband' it has been implied that the broadband will not have any restrictions placed upon it.

I kinda doubt you would be able to establish either of the above. The place to try would be the small claims court I would suggest. Cheap and quick!!

Overheal

hmmm....I was kind of hoping for an under-the-table agreement, really.. If I made a huge deal of it, that would only tick the landlady right off, which doesn't sound like a good idea to me...

By 'unlimited', however, that would indeed seem to indicate as you say "as often as I want for as long as I want"...in which case she has been quite contradictory to even that by saying that past tennants were taking 'too much' broadband...how unlimted is that? If she really wanted to, she could go ahead and put a Cap on how much bandwidth I get at any one time, so this seems a bit odd.

course, maybe I should just run some spam-ware; just suck up all the bandwidth anyway

On a side note, I'm going to go contact a few game-sites just to check up on the average amount of bandwidth requirement...most of the games I own are built to run on 56k, anyway.

jimmycrackcorm

padser wrote:

To be honest with you my feeling is that you are not entitled to anything. slightly mislead you may been but the add says 'unlimited use of broadband' rather then 'unrestricted' use.

As I would interpret it, you do have unlimited use since you can use it as often as you want for as long as you want. You simply cant access some of the features you want to.

There are two ways in which you could claim you to have been falsely advertised to.

1) if you could establish that use of the word 'unlimited' in relation to broadband normally means that there are no resrictions on the broadband such as you have outlined above, and not that you have unlimited time on the connection.

OR

2) That in using the term the 'broadband' it has been implied that the broadband will not have any restrictions placed upon it.

I kinda doubt you would be able to establish either of the above. The place to try would be the small claims court I would suggest. Cheap and quick!!

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1) - Cite This Source
un‧lim‧it‧ed  /ʌnˈlɪmɪtɪd/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[uhn-lim-i-tid] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

–adjective 1. not limited; unrestricted; unconfined: unlimited trade.
2. boundless; infinite; vast: the unlimited skies.
3. without any qualification or exception; unconditional.


Can't argue with the dictionary. Unlimited is not specific to time and the broadband service is not provied for as advertised whatsowever.