Ntl Cutting Off High Usage Users

sham69

I have just sent a harshly worded email to comreg.
I doubt it will achieve anything but it made me feel better if nothing else.
Cheers for the email address, I will keep yiz posted if I hear anything

watty

Even I agree that 2G is pitiful. It like a mobile phone Cap. A single user needs at least 15G, preferably 20G.

PixelTrawler

sham69 wrote:

I have just sent a harshly worded email to comreg.
I doubt it will achieve anything but it made me feel better if nothing else.
Cheers for the email address, I will keep yiz posted if I hear anything

Good man, nice to see people taking action...

I sent this to Comreg myself: ( Maybe it will do nothing but at the very least I wanted to highlight my annoyance )

"I would like to highlight concerns I have over the way UPC ( formerly NTL ) are treating broadband customers..
If you check this forum thread, in particular pages 14-17 of it, you will see reports of UPC/NTL breaching their own terms and conditions.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054987355&page=17

Their T&C's state all caps on their Broadband products are Downstream usage. Yet they are measuring total usage - this has been confirmed by users - and then informing people by letter they are breaching their caps - which appears to be false.

Some users, using home meters have total measurements ( up and down ) matching what UPC/NTL are saying they downloaded. 2 others users spoke to customer service staff who confirmed they are measuring Total usage.

UPC/NTL are also giving people final warnings based on these measurements and informing them they will be automatically cut off if they break the cap again.

This seems to be a clear breach of their own Terms and Conditions.

The T&C's state the following:

Monthly usage allowances for ntl’s Broadband services are: up to 2 (Gb) (Broadband Value),
16 Gigabytes (Gb) (Broadband Starter), 30 Gb (Broadband) or 40 Gb (Broadband Max). All
monthly usage allowances refer to levels of downstream data transfer monthly.

This is causing a lot of unhappiness and distress among users, especially those receiving these letters as many, quite rightly, feel they have not breached the cap.

Users are requesting among other things...

* A clear cap policy and enforcement policy

* An ability to measure monthly downloads if they are going to be so strict on caps - after all with multiple devices in users home these days it impossible to know how much you have downloaded.

This difficulty is further compounded by the fact that UPC/NTL seem to be counting total usage ( up & down ) whereas most users believe they are being measured on Download only. After all its in the terms of their contract with NTL.

I hope this is something you can look into."

Cabaal

T&C's link: http://www.ntl.ie/pdf/UserPolicyJuly2005.pdf?SessionID=98884660e72b9404fb4f960edf65a44d&R=20166 (saved & printed in case they decide to change it or remove it!)

"Normal use" of the service is defined as up to 1 gigabyte downstream of data transfer daily
(which equates to approximately 200 music tracks, 650 short videos, 10,000 pictures or around 100 large software programmes downloaded per day).
Monthly usage allowances for ntl’s Broadband services are: up to 2 (Gb) (Broadband Value), 16 Gigabytes (Gb) (Broadband Starter), 30 Gb (Broadband) or 40 Gb (Broadband Max). All monthly usage allowances refer to levels of downstream data transfer monthly.

While I'll admit I went 20GB over their download cap of 30GB, their T&C's does state its downstream data only and they did count upstream data in their letter to me.

So technically NTL are terminating a/c's based on incorrect information, I'd imagine a good few people have a leg to stand on here

Jonnie_Onion

Has anyone received a warning letter who remained within the download cap?

Or is it just a case that NTL are using these larger figures to scare users who are exceeding the stated download cap?

cance

look after reading all this, mostly stupid bickering i may add.

where exactly does this leave us people over the limit (just for refeence 40gb transfer rate 153.445gb last month w00t!)

When I signed up for this package:

A. there was no cap mentioned in the T&C's, and
B. i recall its name being "unlimited".

i mean from A alone does this not legally provide an "opt out", i.e. if they attempt to "upgrade you and charge accordingly, suspend or disconnect your service for continued high usage" that in itself is changing the service we signed up for? can they legally change the details of the contract mid way through?

DemonOfTheFall

I just complained to the ASAI and comreg aswell.

branners69

Just off the phone to a quite helpful Broadband Support Team member.

She told me that your download cap is calculated over the past 30 days, I thought it was monthly as in come the 1st of October I had 40gb to download but evidently I was wrong.

She ran a report and since 23 Aug I have downloaded 37.5gb and uploaded 20gb. So that leaves me with 2.5gb free (ignoring the 20gb download), and if on the 24 Aug I downloaded 5gb then in 2 days time I will have 7.5gb free!! This is a complete pain in the arse as I have no idea what I downloaded and when over the past 30 days!!

She also said they are dumping the routing via Amsterdam in the next 2 weeks cos of all the complaints of slow speeds!!

A quick question, my dad has a 6mb connection which he never uses. If I swop my NTL modem for his does that mean I would have his untouched cap??

cance

copied the above email and sent it off, also rallied support from my friends that are other NTL users.

PixelTrawler

That method of calculation is next to impossible to do at home...:rolleyes:

Jonnie_Onion

branners69 wrote:

Just off the phone to a quite helpful Broadband Support Team member.

She told me that your download cap is calculated over the past 30 days, I thought it was monthly as in come the 1st of October I had 40gb to download but evidently I was wrong.

She ran a report and since 23 Aug I have downloaded 37.5gb and uploaded 20gb. So that leaves me with 2.5gb free (ignoring the 20gb download), and if on the 24 Aug I downloaded 5gb then in 2 days time I will have 7.5gb free!! This is a complete pain in the arse as I have no idea what I downloaded and when over the past 30 days!!

She also said they are dumping the routing via Amsterdam in the next 2 weeks cos of all the complaints of slow speeds!!

A quick question, my dad has a 6mb connection which he never uses. If I swop my NTL modem for his does that mean I would have his untouched cap??

Very difficult to keep track of. The sooner they get a monitoring system in place the better.

The running total definitely helps them, since you wont have every heavy user hammering the connection in the last few days of the month.

Jonnie_Onion

Just rang them again. The traffic will be measured from the first to the last of the month. Up and Down combined and this will remain the case. I was told the "typo" in their user policy is in the process of being corrected. No letter going out, so the first you hear of it will be when they tell you you're breaking the cap.

Just ordered an eircom line ( felt dirty! ), then going to move to Smart.

PixelTrawler

As we've seen before here in Boards - each cs staff member is telling each person a different thing as theres no clear direction among themselves or from management

Jonnie here is told its 1st to start of month and its now up and down.
Others have been told its a rolling cap. Others have been told it going to be changed back to down only or the cap will be increased and be total usage...

I don't believe a word the CS are saying as I honestly believe they have no idea themselves - they may believe they do but its likely they are hearing mixed messages inside or its a case of the blind leading the blind among themselves

branners69

Jonnie_Onion wrote:

The traffic will be measured from the first to the last of the month. Up and Down combined and this will remain the case.

So why was I told this morning thats its calculated over the past 30 days??

They really are full of sh1t!!

Drapper

Mixed answers is right Joeblogss !! they are now taking the IBB/Clearwire route to distruction!

Jonnie_Onion

As someone metioned here previously, their systems only allow them to check a rolling cap. However, you will only be measured against the cap at month end. That's my take on it anyway.

I'm going to be ringing to speak to one of the tech guys on broadband support tonight, see what I can get out of them.

opo

As far as I am concerned, anyone reading this thread thinking about broadband should stay well clear of NTL.

A lot of people here have been caught out by a company policy that is ill explained and applied with a heavy hand.

Anyone with NTL digital TV with difficulties, probably already knows that NTL "customer support" is the pits.

Broadband Max has become a similar joke.

If you want to feel like a low-life criminal for PURCHASING a servive and welcome threatening letters greeting you after a hard days work, sign up for NTL now.

rogue-entity

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

Why is it that people can't understand that different people have differing needs.

If you really don't need 40 gigs a month, then go to a product with a lower cap and leave some allowance for the rest of your fellow users. It's not fair that you hog all that allowance that you don't need.:rolleyes:

My cap is 30G, I dont use NTL, I have 2Meg BT DSL. NTLs caps are ****e to be honest. The cap for their 6Gig service should be 80-100Gigs, their 3Meg service should be 50-80 and their 2Meg should be 30-50. They cant do unlimted broadband because of a fundimental limitation of cable broadband. If user A is maxing out his 6meg connection to download a Linux ISO, and I am next door with cable BB and want to download something else, my bandwidth will be reduced because of the actions of user B. That is the reason NTL caps their connections, they couldnt be bothered providing extra capacity (by using the unused VHF TV frequencies).

NTL provides greater bandwidth, but its shared by everyone on the loop. DSL is not quite the same, If I max out my connection, I know its not going to affect anyone else on my exchange as much. I dont download anything larger than 300Megs because it takes too long, thats what I use the college internet for 30Megs of uncapped fiber

Yes, not everyone who is a heavy downloader is dowloading illegal stuff but I wouldnt be surprised if a sizable amount of those who are exceeding their caps are downloading illegal content.

Fighting Irish

ESAT BT + ftw, i always go over and nothings ever happened

oceanclub

So am I understanding it correctly that NTL have effectively halved their cap without informing their customers?

I'm really annoyed.

P.

cdebru

opo wrote:

As far as I am concerned, anyone reading this thread thinking about broadband should stay well clear of NTL.

A lot of people here have been caught out by a company policy that is ill explained and applied with a heavy hand.

Anyone with NTL digital TV with difficulties, probably already knows that NTL "customer support" is the pits.

Broadband Max has become a similar joke.

If you want to feel like a low-life criminal for PURCHASING a servive and welcome threatening letters greeting you after a hard days work, sign up for NTL now.

The problem is that broadband is now mainstream everyone is getting it even people who don't use it.
NTL do not want people who actually use broadband or notice when it is running slow because they are routing everything out through Amsterdam.
They dont want bit torrenters or the people who download all the Linux ISOs

They want the people who pay for a 6meg connection but have no idea what that means and who use the connection to browse around the internet for an hour or two and check their emails.
That is where the money is.

They wanted your business in the beginning because you were the only people interested in broadband they dont need it now and while they might have a bad name amongst the techies they dont care because you are a small minority most of the people signing up have no idea about caps or cut offs and care less

cdebru

Fighting Irish wrote:

ESAT BT + ftw, i always go over and nothings ever happened

Well if all the high downloaders leaving or being kicked off NTL go over to BT then BT will end up doing the same nobody wants their business except maybe smart who are probably desparate for anyones business.

bk

cdebru wrote:

The problem is that broadband is now mainstream everyone is getting it even people who don't use it.
NTL do not want people who actually use broadband or notice when it is running slow because they are routing everything out through Amsterdam.
They dont want bit torrenters or the people who download all the Linux ISOs

Well if this is true, then NTL/UPC is truly f**cked. THe thing is they might want does sort of light users, but for the most part they aren't and won't get them.

Those sort of light users are all on Eircom (about 70% of all BB users), simply because they don't know any better and it is just easy for them. Also Eircom has massive, national ad campaigns.

NTL/UPC on the other hand is a niche ISP, with a small amount of ads and limited availability, therefore it will never gain a significant proportion of those light BB users. They will find it almost impossible to drag them off Eircom.

That is why the more techy (and heavy) users are so important to all the niche players (NTL, Smart, etc.), techy users are generally whats called early adaptors, which means they are willing to experiment, look for the best deals and are willing to move around. So users when they find a good niche service, will then get all their family and friends to sign up to the same service. This is far more valuable then any advertising campaign and up until now it has worked very well for NTL/UPC, that is why this action is so stupid.

Also I don't really believe that there really that many truly light BB users anymore. When I hook up friends on dial-up to BB, I find they quickly go from light users to medium users as they discover the joys of BB, using services like youtube, flicker, streaming radio, etc.

Blaster99

bk wrote:

NTL/UPC on the other hand is a niche ISP, with a small amount of ads and limited availability, therefore it will never gain a significant proportion of those light BB users. They will find it almost impossible to drag them off Eircom.

Did you not make the point some time ago that NTL achieves higher BB take-up than eircom?

bk

Blaster99 wrote:

Did you not make the point some time ago that NTL achieves higher BB take-up than eircom?

Yes, in areas where it is available. But I believe that tends to be the more moderate to heavy users. It definitely isn't the person who just does a bit of light email and browsing.

Also as I said I believe a lot of the NTL take up is due to advise from more techy users. I know I've probably convinced at least a dozen people to sign up to NTL. I can guarantee they wouldn't have if I hadn't told them to.

Fighting Irish

cdebru wrote:

Well if all the high downloaders leaving or being kicked off NTL go over to BT then BT will end up doing the same nobody wants their business except maybe smart who are probably desparate for anyones business.

when i say i always go over i mean the cap is 32GB down and i usually download 50GB

patch

bk wrote:

Yes, in areas where it is available. But I believe that tends to be the more moderate to heavy users. It definitely isn't the person who just does a bit of light email and browsing.

Also as I said I believe a lot of the NTL take up is due to advise from more techy users. I know I've probably convinced at least a dozen people to sign up to NTL. I can guarantee they wouldn't have if I hadn't told them to.

You've made a very valid point there.... all us users affected on here have most likely left another service and moved to NTL. Then, we have been the cause of many others signing up through word of mouth. I wonder how long it will take to reverse that trend?

Hopefully NTL will begin to feel some sort of pinch and react accordingly.

PeakOutput

ok so it may have been disscussed already but besides the download cap(i know i wont reach anywhere near it) is ntl broadband a good choice i want higher connection speeds to play games and download mp3's(legally) faster thats it no downloading of films or demos etc........is ntl going to do the trick because at the moment esat just isnt consistent enough its not working as much as it is and when it is working the pings are horrible(orb not entireley the connections fault)

so is it worth going to ntl or not

sorry if this should be on a different thread

Drapper

PeakOutput wrote:

ok so it may have been disscussed already but besides the download cap(i know i wont reach anywhere near it) is ntl broadband a good choice i want higher connection speeds to play games and download mp3's(legally) faster thats it no downloading of films or demos etc........is ntl going to do the trick because at the moment esat just isnt consistent enough its not working as much as it is and when it is working the pings are horrible(orb not entireley the connections fault)

so is it worth going to ntl or not

sorry if this should be on a different thread

I think you have come into a thread where allot of people are angry with NTL so I feel you'll get a negative response to the question.

NTL was the muts nuts until about 1.5 months ago and its all gone pear shaped!

PeakOutput

ye and i understand the frustration with the cap but i know that particular thing wont be an issue to me esat's cs is ****e aswell and everytime there is a problem they blame eircom but what i want to know is is there a problem with the actual broadband service ntl provides

ie
is it actually 6mbs 99% of the time and is it always on 99% of the time

as far as cs one is as bad as the other so at least if the above is true i wont have to call them as much

again is this is the wrong thread sorry but cant find another one