are you sure bt dont charge for breaking cap

mukki

i was going to upgrade to bt broadband plus today, becuase my 12 gig cap is gone already, but it said that i already have a service (poxy website)


but anyway, would i be safe to just keep downloading.

OfflerCrocGod

Well I'm on the 24Gb service and have never been charged; along with a bigger cap you also get faster speeds (going up again in January). I'm not certain that BT dont charge for the lower package though.....

kmurph

I went over the cap for the first time over the past couple of months. By about 5gb in september and 1gb last month and I haven't been charged. (Touch wood!)

The general consensus seems to be that as long as you're not totally crazy with the cap and only going over by a few gb you're pretty much ok.

Although hopefully with the predicted speed bump next month they'll increase the cap again.

halenger

I've gone over it a few times I think - hard to tell when the system stays at 0 for a month or freezes mid way through the month (this month and last month respectively). Haven't been charged though. I guess we'll be due an increase in our cap with these upgrades anyway - as was said last time we were due one, they're not about to start charging people just before they upgrade and increase cap. (Not that they wont/couldn't - just what was bandied about last time.)

zuma

My view,

Their market share is actually increible small and charging like UTV would be of short time gain but not good for the long term as BT as not going anywhere!
BT want a big chunk of the Irisk market as they know the regulator here is useless and their profits back in the UK are shrinking due to a far better regulator.

Basically unless they magically control 50% of the BB market in the morning then we have no reason to get scared.

As said above though, if your on the Basic package then dont go nuts as Plus users are certainly paying for the privelage of their increased CAP as is!

spooky donkey

Very few net providers seem to charge for going over. My brother was on eircom downloading a lot and ne never got charged.

Sarunas

Anyone know by how much is the cap going to be increased for the normal package?

zuma

Sarunas wrote:

Anyone know by how much is the cap going to be increased for the normal package?

Somewhere in the 20GB region I would guess.

wheresmybeaver

So the broadband plus cap will go up too ya think? somewhere around 30 or 40 GB perhaps? Jesus I'll go mad on torrents if that happens!

Dave

Kristok

Can you afford it if they do decide to charge you I always look at it that way. No company has gone and started charging its customers for excess but they can if they decide to so if you think you can afford it if the unlikly event arises then go ahead and if you cant then decide if thats something you want to have to deal with. Dont go listening to anyone on here telling you youll be fine they dont know anymore than you do so if you want to take the risk like allot of people do then cool but just make sure your prepared if it all gos wrong cause companies just have to get one a hole of a manager to decide they can make a fortune if they impliment a policy that has gone unused thusfar for your bill to go from €40 to €1000. Whats not happened in the past should not be a measurment for what will happen in the future.

daveyjoe

Kristok wrote:

Can you afford it if they do decide to charge you I always look at it that way. No company has gone and started charging its customers for excess but they can if they decide to so if you think you can afford it if the unlikly event arises then go ahead and if you cant then decide if thats something you want to have to deal with. Dont go listening to anyone on here telling you youll be fine they dont know anymore than you do so if you want to take the risk like allot of people do then cool but just make sure your prepared if it all gos wrong cause companies just have to get one a hole of a manager to decide they can make a fortune if they impliment a policy that has gone unused thusfar for your bill to go from €40 to €1000. Whats not happened in the past should not be a measurment for what will happen in the future.

That's Wrong, UTV charge you if you go over the cap (you have the option to be cut off instead). I think it would be highly unlikely that BT or Eircom would start charging without giving customers prior warning that they would be charged for going over the cap.

Auvers

daveyjoe wrote:

That's Wrong, UTV charge you if you go over the cap (you have the option to be cut off instead). I think it would be highly unlikely that BT or Eircom would start charging without giving customers prior warning that they would be charged for going over the cap.

Exactly what I thought, they have to give you prior warning about breaking your cap. I always hit around 50-60 gigs a month and never been charged!!

flagpole

was glad to see this post, weve gone over by 2.65 gb download this month, first time and was worried we might get charged, however the reason this happened was that for about a week the web page that tells you how much you have downloaded was stuck at 14.1 gb!!

someone told me that your upload contributes to your 12/24 gb limit..anyone shed some light on this

clearz

I remember one month in 2003 when the cap was 8Gb I went over it by about 3GB and they cut me off for the rest of the month. Since the cap has been 16Gb and greater I have rearly gone over it.

flagpole AFAIK the cap is seperate for both download and upload.

zuma

clearz wrote:

I remember one month in 2003 when the cap was 8Gb I went over it by about 3GB and they cut me off for the rest of the month. Since the cap has been 16Gb and greater I have rearly gone over it.

flagpole AFAIK the cap is seperate for both download and upload.

But remember that was 2003 and about 1000* DSL installs were working in the country at the time.

*=Total guess but come on there must have been F*** all!

kaizersoze

daveyjoe wrote:

That's Wrong, UTV charge you if you go over the cap (you have the option to be cut off instead). I think it would be highly unlikely that BT or Eircom would start charging without giving customers prior warning that they would be charged for going over the cap.

Thats exactly right except for the advance notice bit. ALL BB companies have it in their T&C's that they "Reserve the right" to charge for exceeding the download allowance, so thats the advanced notice taken care of. They could decide in the morning to start charging and there is nothing you can do as you've already signed up and agreed to the T&C's.

zuma

kaizersoze wrote:

Thats exactly right except for the advance notice bit. ALL BB companies have it in their T&C's that they "Reserve the right" to charge for exceeding the download allowance, so thats the advanced notice taken care of. They could decide in the morning to start charging and there is nothing you can do as you've already signed up and agreed to the T&C's.

In the UK, when BT started charging(did they ever start?) they gave their customers a couple of month notice of what they intended to do.

OfflerCrocGod

clearz wrote:

I remember one month in 2003 when the cap was 8Gb I went over it by about 3GB and they cut me off for the rest of the month. Since the cap has been 16Gb and greater I have rearly gone over it.

They used to do that - they dont anymore

daveyjoe

kaizersoze wrote:

Thats exactly right except for the advance notice bit. ALL BB companies have it in their T&C's that they "Reserve the right" to charge for exceeding the download allowance, so thats the advanced notice taken care of. They could decide in the morning to start charging and there is nothing you can do as you've already signed up and agreed to the T&C's.

Yeah they could, but I don't think a big company like BT/Eircom would try and pull a fast one like that, they wouldn't get away with it.

dub45

daveyjoe wrote:

Yeah they could, but I don't think a big company like BT/Eircom would try and pull a fast one like that, they wouldn't get away with it.

Whats to stop them? Look at what they get away with with their appallingly incompetent billing department?

daveyjoe

dub45 wrote:

Whats to stop them? Look at what they get away with with their appallingly incompetent billing department?

Incompetence is a totally different thing though. They would actually have to make a decision to start enforcing caps. I can't see them making that decision without giving prior notice to customers.

It's a grey area and I'm only giving my opinion. People like Auvers who download 50-60gb would have a bill for ... (someone get there calculator out). It would be an absolute fiasco if they did it, I don't know how many people are in the same boat as Auvers, but I can imagine that an awful lot of them would refuse to pay.

Will they start enforcing the cap? I don't know!
Will they start enforcing the cap without letting everybody know in advance? Extremely unlikely (in my opinion)!

dub45

daveyjoe wrote:

Incompetence is a totally different thing though. They would actually have to make a decision to start enforcing caps. I can't see them making that decision without giving prior notice to customers.

It's a grey area and I'm only giving my opinion. People like Auvers who download 50-60gb would have a bill for ... (someone get there calculator out). It would be an absolute fiasco if they did it, I don't know how many people are in the same boat as Auvers, but I can imagine that an awful lot of them would refuse to pay.

Will they start enforcing the cap? I don't know!
Will they start enforcing the cap without letting everybody know in advance? Extremely unlikely (in my opinion)!

I am broadly in agreement with you but the question remains who would stop them? They would be perfectly within their rights to start charaging without any notice so long as the charge is provided for in the terms and conditions.

daveyjoe

dub45 wrote:

I am broadly in agreement with you but the question remains who would stop them? They would be perfectly within their rights to start charaging without any notice so long as the charge is provided for in the terms and conditions.

Yeah, nothing would stop them except for the fear of the bad press they would get. No, it can not be 100% guaranteed but personally I would be 99.9% sure that they would give prior warning. That's enough of a guarantee for me but it may not be enough for someone else.

I might as well state that I don't go over my cap because I'm with UTV and if I go over they'll cut me off, so this is a non-issue for me. UTV's policy on cap enforcement sucks but I'm counting the pennys and €29.99/month for 2048down/256up isn't bad.

Kristok

daveyjoe wrote:

That's Wrong, UTV charge you if you go over the cap (you have the option to be cut off instead). I think it would be highly unlikely that BT or Eircom would start charging without giving customers prior warning that they would be charged for going over the cap.

sorry was under the impression you just got cut off didnt think there was an option to get charged. I was talking about eircom/bt etc who have the small print about charging.

Sarunas

bt wrote:

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]Is there a data transfer limit with Broadband?

[/FONT] [FONT=Arial, Helvetica]You are entitled to a free transfer limit of up to 12 Gigabytes of data in any given month.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]If you go over this generous limit then we reserve the right to charge you for any additional data (at 3cent inc VAT per MB).[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]You will be entitled to use 12GB in either direction without penalty. i.e. you can upload 12GB and download 12GB in the same month without penalty. However if you upload 4GB and download 13GB then your account will be suspended.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]This data allowance is calculated at the end of every 24 hrs and if you are consistently above this amount we reserve the right to suspend or permanently disconnect your account during the first month you go over it.[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica]
[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]

Not exactly very clear.

Hell, if they decide to charge you, you would be paying 30 euro for a gig!
[/FONT]