Charges for 6GB over cap with UTV internet

BTE72

I checked my utv bill today for June 2007 ( the bill is always a month behind) to discover on top of my 20.99 per month for 2Mb service and 12GB cap a whopping over usage charge of 83.27 for 6.6 GB over my cap. I was in shock to see the amount charged.. I can honestly say i was surprised that i even reached 18GB in traffic downloaded, normally i would be well under.

I rang the helpdesk but only got tech support after 6 pm so got limited account info, they were helpful considering.. I was told that when you reach 75% of your cap you get an automated message emailed to you - this never got to me and when i told this i was smartly told that it was still my responsibility to login and check usage in my account page.. I agree that i bear some responsibility here but i feel that a decent warning should be in place as well.

My second grievance is 83.27 for apprx 6.6 GB wow!! in this day in age considering file downloads i.e music & video files being so large this is a rip off.

I pay 20.99 for 12GB and an extra 6GB costed me apprx 4 months line rental. A very easy trap to fall into!

Can anybody give me advice in approaching the customer services with this or has anybody had a similar experience?

Vmaxer

I went through the mill with them about a Year ago for the same reason, they just took the money off My credit card and there was no talking to them, they were just plain ignorant..

Needless to say I changed to BT after that and never got charged for going over the 20GB.

dub45

What exactly do you expect people to say on here? Poor you and those awful UTV people? UTV like it or not have always been the ones to charge as soon as the cap was exceeded - that is well known - UTV provide an 'unlimited' facility subject I presume to fair usage policy for an extra €5.99 a month so the option is there for heavy down loaders of 'linux distros'

You went over your cap by 50% and didn't notice and you want to blame UTV?

NIBBS

dub45 wrote:

What exactly do you expect people to say on here? Poor you and those awful UTV people? UTV like it or not have always been the ones to charge as soon as the cap was exceeded - that is well known - UTV provide an 'unlimited' facility subject I presume to fair usage policy for an extra €5.99 a month so the option is there for heavy down loaders of 'linux distros'

You went over your cap by 50% and didn't notice and you want to blame UTV?

agreed....

I really don't know why you would be complaining about this ?
have you not read the T&C for your contract with them ????
it's not like you haven't got a number of options to stop this happening, first thing you should do is to monitor your own Usage per month.
You could also change the setting on your account so that once you hit your limit your account is suspended for the rest of that month, this will ensure that you are never billed but would obviously mean you could have no connection for a period time at the end of a month.
Thirdly you could do as Dub45 and get the Unlimited option, and again for an extra few Euros a month you wouldn't have to worry about it..........

either way if you go over a Cap and have been told you'll be charged for doing so, just deal with it..........:rolleyes:

Cabaal

UTV are in the right, it is your job to monitor your usage using the tools they make available to you...tregardless if they were supposed to notify you via e-mail.

At the end of the day UTV are very fair by providing a "Unlimited" option at a extra price and there T&C's state charges to which you were correctly charged for going over your capped service.

Pay up and move on, your in the wrong completely

BattlingCheese

yup UTV even send out a mail when you get near your Cap saying that you are in danger of going over your cap and follow this link to your account where you can tell us what to do.

As mentioned your 2 options are A> suspend your broadband for remainder of the month or B. accept you will be charged for any use over the cap.

It's all very transparent.

MarkR

As above, you can get unlimited for 5.99 extra. You could have set the option to cut you off if you reached the limit, or monitored it yourself.

In regard to the email it's likely your spam filter caught it. Harsh but not utv's fault.

BTE72

Thanks for all your opinions on this ...

I was speaking to the admin section today and was informed that if you select to option to charge for over usage in your account page then NO warning email will be sent to your email address... If you have selected suspend further downloads a warning will be sent when you are within 10% of your limit

The admin people agreed as a good will gesture to meet me halfway on the charge, which I thought was fair. A 40 Euro slap on the wrist/reminder to watch usage

This was never a UTV are wrong and I was right i just stated the facts which i think highlight...

1. the price they charge for over usage was appropriate about 4 years ago when i joined them and people were downloading much smaller amounts. 15 Euro per gig is steep when you consider a music album would be on average 70-80 MB (decent quality). A DVD rip could be 700-800 MB and these are probably the most commonly downloaded file types for me and i'm sure many others. 6 Gig as i have discovered can be covered fairly quickly
2. The automated system should be in place as a safeguard to help protect the customer from being over charged... in almost 4 years i have been charged once previously for over usage which was almost a gig over. i agree i bear some responsibility for checking my usage but the isp should also.... It is in there interest not to inform you for going over!!! Makes perfect business sense.

Cabaal

Sadly the price they charge for overuse is not different to what otgher ISP's charge for overuse,

In fairness if people are bright enough to figure out how to download movies (strange since there's no legal movie download service available in Ireland except Sky) then these people are bright enough to monitor their usage imho

Caps suck but at the end of the day you get what you sign upto,

RuggieBear

BTE72 wrote:

1. the price they charge for over usage was appropriate about 4 years ago when i joined them and people were downloading much smaller amounts. 15 Euro per gig is steep when you consider a music album would be on average 70-80 MB (decent quality). A DVD rip could be 700-800 MB and these are probably the most commonly downloaded file types for me and i'm sure many others. 6 Gig as i have discovered can be covered fairly quickly

so you want them to lower their charges so you can illegally download more movies and music???

dub45

RuggieBear wrote:

so you want them to lower their charges so you can illegally download more movies and music???

You misjudge the poster! They are all linux distros!

Amazing how people can be so agitated about being legitimately charged for exceeding a cap and have no qualms whatsoever about what constitutes the downloads:rolleyes:

And then to talk about ''business sense''!!!!

DECEiFER

Just take Unlimited. If you're like me and do a lot of downloading, you do only have yourself to blame when (not if) you go over your download limit.

I was with BT for a long time, and this is no word of a lie, they never charge. Their CS even said nobody had ever been charged for overuse. They made it a point to warn me, for my own benefit, not to take the piss, though. They don't have any automated monitoring system. If you get caught, it's done by manually by a human and totally at random. I once went to 68GB 2/3 of the way through the month back in January. They cut me off. I rang them up to ask why, chancing my arm. They said I had downloaded too much, over double my cap. But they released the block, and just told me to take it easy for the rest of the month.

UTV on the other hand have an automated system, and will charge you for overuse, or indeed suspend you, given whatever option you have chosen. If you plan on going over and don't want to pay out of your ass, or experience downtime, pay the €5.99 extra. It's not a lot, and would still make UTV the cheapest bitstream ISP in Ireland outside of line rental bundles.

EDIT: Crap, I just realized the date of the last post on this thread. I didn't mean to bump it. Sorry.

kaizersoze

I really should look at the dates before reading the whole ****ing thing.:(

Creamy Goodness

oops i forgot to read the terms and conditions of a contract i committed too, will that hold up in court. :rolleyes:

DECEiFER

Cremo wrote: »

oops i forgot to read the terms and conditions of a contract i committed too, will that hold up in court. :rolleyes:

Here's a rule. When signing up to something, always use some form of disposable account for billing, and if possible, move house upon breaking contract. Then if haggling doesn't work, and they insist you owe them money and whatnot, then skip out and they will never find you. It's better to exist off the radar.

As for the dates of all the posts. I believe this thread is still as relevant today as it was back then.

Creamy Goodness

why on earth was just dug back up?

Cabaal

Die Zombie Thread DIE!