Bad broadband deal!

loveroflight

Hi,
I took out a deal with a well known service provider (which will remain unnamed for the moment). I was offered 10, 15, or 30 GB deal P/M. I was assured that 30 GB was a huge capacity and would be very difficult to exceed or reach. Unknowing to myself, I did exceed it by 2 GB and was charged a penalty 40 times the rate of the monthly deal. (per GB).
There are other reasons that I'm not happy this deal and tried to cancel, but I was informed that i would have to pay for the 18 month contract agreed.
Any advice?

old_aussie

Always read the fine print re extra charges and monitor your usage.

I pay($13.00 in Australia) 9.96 Euro for 230 Gig

If I go over on my plan I cop a whopping charge per Gig of .76 euro, or get the option to be shaped and no extra charge.

If I was with Telstra(who claim to be australia's leading broadband supplier) and went 1 Gig over I would pay 15 cents per Mb, thats $150 per Gig(114.99 Euro) so it pays to make your contract choice wisely.

roast

Well, what exactly are you using your connection for?
How long have you been with UPC?
How many times have you exceeded the usage?

homer911

We are a family of 5, all using the internet, and our monthly usage is currently around 25GB on a 40GB Vodafone package - its reasonable to say that a 30GB package would be sufficient for one person (or are there lots of people using your connection?)

SupraSonic_26

roast wrote: »

Well, what exactly are you using your connection for?
How long have you been with UPC?
How many times have you exceeded the usage?

upc dont do 18 month contracts so it cant be them unless he got the contract lenght wrong.


how much did you download?

NIMAN

30gb is a HUGE limit to be honest, so to use 32gb you must be doing a lot of downloading.

"Generally speaking a 30GB limit will enable you to look at around 314,500 web pages a month and download about 6145 mp3 songs (equivalent to about 600albums)"

Having said that, the penalty you were charged was very excessive. I know that if you exceed your limit on broadband or phone deals it can be costly, but these people should really give you some sort of warning you have passed the 30gb limit, or even stop your cionnection from working at that point. But then of course, they wouldn't get a pile of money off you in charges if they did.

SupraSonic_26

only noticed he was on about his bb downloading not speed so it wouldnt be upc i dont think, check there terms and conditions and see if there any way around it?

spoon

i wouldn't call 30Gb "huge". UPC have an acceptable usage policy that will let you away with 250Gb for example.

That being said, if it's only for browsing etc, 30Gb is enough for a month, for downloading video etc you'd see that allowance used up pretty quick.

CaSCaDe711

30GB is a lot of data, but if any of the users are into iTunes, and subscribed to podcasts etc, that 30GB can deplete quite rapidly.

drunkmonkey

loveroflight wrote: »

There are other reasons that I'm not happy this deal and tried to cancel

What are the other reasons? I had vodafone at home broadband it was utter rubbish and they let me leave after a few weeks of flipping out with them.

I presume you've mobile broadband with them as their home packages have a lot higher caps.

What Vodafone package are you actually on? Their mobile broadband doesn't come in 10, 15 or 30gb options neither do their fixed line packages.

You had a 30GB allowance, went 2G over it and got charged as per the T's & C's of your contract. There's not a whole lot you can do about that.
I'm not sure if vodafone will let you do it but you could ask them to 0 you credit limit, i.e when you hit the 30GB your internet stops working but you won't get charged anything extra. I know some of the networks allow that.

If you really want to avoid this get in fixed line and a higher cap, maybe something over 80GB per month.

NIMAN

They have you over a barrel legally of course, as you yourself agreed to the T&C, and somewhere in the small print they will have a monetary figure for each additional MB or GB of additional data you use above your limit.

Of course none of us ever read these T&Cs and agree without thinking. Hopefully you can come to some agreement with them

vibe666

NIMAN wrote: »

30gb is a HUGE limit to be honest, so to use 32gb you must be doing a lot of downloading.

no offence and excuse me if you meant it as a joke, but if you are being serious then you're talking out of your backside. 30gb is NOTHING on a monthly basis. less than 1gb per day is about as far from HUGE as you could get. ffs you could download 600mb in a day on a 56k dialup connection, 1gb is feck all close to HUGE by any kind of broadband standard.

my apologies if you are actually a time traveller from 2001 but this isn't 2001, it's 2011 and there is a humongous amount of things to do online other than look at a few web pages or download the odd mp3 and all of them take up bandwidth.

calling 30gb a HUGE limit (and in capitals:rolleyes:) is nothing short of a ridiculous statement.

Feidhlim

vibe666 wrote: »

no offence and excuse me if you meant it as a joke, but if you are being serious then you're talking out of your backside. 30gb is NOTHING on a monthly basis. less than 1gb per day is about as far from HUGE as you could get. ffs you could download 600mb in a day on a 56k dialup connection, 1gb is feck all close to HUGE by any kind of broadband standard.

my apologies if you are actually a time traveller from 2001 but this isn't 2001, it's 2011 and there is a humongous amount of things to do online other than look at a few web pages or download the odd mp3 and all of them take up bandwidth.

calling 30gb a HUGE limit (and in capitals:rolleyes:) is nothing short of a ridiculous statement.

+1

Nollog

Yeah, 3g is pretty terrible.
A friend of mine was close to their limit, went to get a cup of tea and when he came back he had no internet.
He was with 3 and they cut him off after 1GB over his limit (costing him 30 euro on top of his subscription charge).
A GB can go in the blink of an eye, and the stats ISP's give are misleading.

Big Lar

Cancel the direct debit, blame the recession, tell em you just can't pay. Its doubtful that they will follow it up.

Course that's easy for me to say.

vibe666

my old man lives in a rural part of the UK and his 3g dongle is actually faster than his fixed line DSL, but with a 10gb limit he can only use it for a couple of weeks a month so he browses with his DSL but he keeps the dongle for big downloads because his DSL is so flaky it usually drops out before any downloads complete.

he's a disabled pensioner and between him and my stepmum with a laptop each (and barely any idea of the many potential uses of the internet) he uses up 10gb without any trouble at all in a couple of weeks, despite it being his backup connection for when his DSL is unreliable.

jor el

Big Lar wrote: »

Cancel the direct debit, blame the recession, tell em you just can't pay. Its doubtful that they will follow it up.

Course that's easy for me to say.

Bad idea and a terrible suggestion. Do not do this.

dub45

Big Lar wrote: »

Cancel the direct debit, blame the recession, tell em you just can't pay. Its doubtful that they will follow it up.

Course that's easy for me to say.

It is easy to say:rolleyes: However in one way it is good advice but only one way.

Remember a direct debit is nothing more that a particular way to pay a bill. It is an appalling system for many reasons one of the being that many bank staff havent a clue about it and will often refuse to cancel a dd.

Cancelling a dd in no way removes the obligation to pay a bill however if you find that you are going through hard times as many people are now it may be wise to cancel a dd rather than just let it bounce month after month.

If a dd bounces it will at the very least incur charges in your bank. My own bank charges 12.50 for each dd that bounces. Some cute hoorish companies like my good friends in UPC also exploit the system to make money for themselves - they will charge you €11 if a dd bounces. So a bounced dd for UPC can cost you 23.50 and remember a company can present the dd again in the same month with repeat charges. The ESB charges 6 euro per bounced dd.

You cancel a direct debit by informing your bank although with the incredibly inappropriately named dd plus (which is the one you sign up over the phone with no paper mandate) you should also inform the company too.

The body responsible for the dd mess is IPSO and you can get further information about dds at www.ipso.ie.

Even where you do cancel a dd keep an eye on your account. Again due to the appalling mess that is the dd system a company can easily reinstate a dd and present it again without any fear of sanction. What a system!

drunkmonkey

/\/ollog wrote: »

A friend of mine was close to their limit, went to get a cup of tea and when he came back he had no internet.
He was with 3 and they cut him off after 1GB over his limit (costing him 30 euro on top of his subscription charge).
A GB can go in the blink of an eye, and the stats ISP's give are misleading.

Believe it or not that's actually a good thing that 3 stopped his service, ive seen crazy bills where other networks just kept the bill running and don't cut you off. One poster on here had a bill of 15,000 from meteor.
OP got billed for going 2GB over and wasn't cut off, he could have easily went another 10gb unknown to himself until the bill arrived.

Nollog

I said it was a good thing via clever subtext.

loveroflight

We did try cancel the dd but the bank said we couldn't do this. Will have another go though!! We do feel they mis-sold the service to us.

dub45

loveroflight wrote: »

We did try cancel the dd but the bank said we couldn't do this. Will have another go though!! We do feel they mis-sold the service to us.

Your bank has absolutely no right to refuse. If they do not do this immediately tell them that you will report them to the financial regulator.


http://www.ipso.ie/section/section/ConsumerCornerDirectDebitFrequentlyAskedQuestions

How do I cancel a direct debit?
You can cancel a direct debit by writing to your bank. It is also advisable to inform the originator of the cancellation.

The lack of knowledge amongst bank staff of the operations of the direct debit scheme is an absolute disgrace.

loveroflight

thanks Dub45

We feel quite entitled to cancel the dd now since after a couple of calls to the broadband company, letting them know our position, they finally cut off the service, so we're using a far better service now who don't have such huge penalties.

dub45

loveroflight wrote: »

thanks Dub45

We feel quite entitled to cancel the dd now since after a couple of calls to the broadband company, letting them know our position, they finally cut off the service, so we're using a far better service now who don't have such huge penalties.

And entitled you are. The banks apparently feel that the dd is somehow part of the contract between you and the company whereas it is nothing more than a method of paying a bill and in case you need further ammunition - from page 22 of the dd scheme.

Cancelling a Direct Debit Instruction (DDI)

The Payer may cancel the DDI by informing his/her Bank.

In these circumstances, the following procedures must be followed:
Step Description

1.Advise Originator - Payer’s Bank must inform the Originator using an “Advice of Instruction Amendment/Cancellation Form” substantially in the form as set out in Appendix 8

2.Originator’s Action An Originator must not present a Direct Debit on a DDI that has beencancelled.

The emphasis is mine - the originator is the company with whom you have/had the contract.

Big Lar

loveroflight wrote: »

We do feel they mis-sold the service to us.

Did you try Comreg ?

loveroflight wrote: »

We did try cancel the dd but the bank said we couldn't do this......

I have had to cancel a few of them in my time, All you need to do is ring the bank to cancel and follow it up with a letter to the bank stating that you would like it cancelled.

PogMoThoin

NIMAN wrote: »

30gb is a HUGE limit to be honest, so to use 32gb you must be doing a lot of downloading.

My Mam uses more than twice that and doesn't download anything, She's got a Blueface phone and uses Skype video calls to My two sisters in USA. 30Gb is miniscule these days

Nemeses

30 Gig Cap is fairly small nowadays.in fact, its almost useless (For a power user anyway).
If I had a 30Gb limit, I would have definitely abused it over the christmas period when Steam had their sale... I brought well over 20 games and total disk space for them to download them at least was way over the 50Gb mark.. that was within a week!
I suppose I'd recommend a usage monitor for your PC so at least you can see how much bandwidth your using.
In regards to the contact and bailing out.. If this is the first time you've gone over your usage and the extra charge for the 2gb isnt much. I'd be a bit more cautious next time and see if they can increase the cap for you as well. Trying to bail out on a contract can be a bit of heart ache which probably isn't worth it in the long one for a once off...:(

vibe666

Big Lar wrote: »

Did you try Comreg banging your head against a brick wall?

fixed your post.

Big Lar

vibe666 wrote: »

fixed your post.

True, LOLz

n97 mini

NIMAN wrote: »

30gb is a HUGE limit to be honest, so to use 32gb you must be doing a lot of downloading.

My 10 year old son managed to breach our 36GB limit by way of Xbox live the first month we switched to Vodafone (who don't tell you how much you've used but impose a fine if you breach their limit).

Moonbeam

I would find it hard to exceed a 30GB download monthly as would a lot of non gamers / not heavy down loaders.
We are online with multiple devices constantly but have only used 16GB in the past 30 days so as much and all as I dislike caps being imposed by isps 30GB is not incredibly low on a normal home connection.

Also, that is some incredible penalty.Was it in the terms and conditions?