Need help with NTL download limit & nasty letter

noreds

My first post so could do with any help on this
Just got a nasty letter from Ntl telling me to stop downloading so much
Should i worry
Should i ignore it or will they boot me if i keep it up
Is it worth switching to another ISP with an uncapped service
Whats out there that doesnt require me switching numers or phone lines or giving them my soul
Also i have been getting great speeds (740kb from a 6mb line)
I dont want to have no download cap and have to wait twice as long for a download
Its not the 1st problem with ntl
signed up to the first 3 months free, they charged me
It was 10 a month cheaper than usual so i thought they must be knocking it off the bill every month for the year
wrong they charged me full whack after 3 months
the line died because of storms before
2 hours on hold waiting for a C/S rep
2 hours each day for 4 days
any other isp with 6mb line seems to charge a fortune for it
So stick with what i got and try to ease off or change???

christophicus

I got the same letter today. It was my first time going over too. The simple answer is , just dont download as much as you previoulsly were. And no they probably wont kick you next time you go over. I think there is someone here that said they have had 5 warnings .

Im hopeing that when NTL get rebranded that their service will improve and the cap/speed will be increased to move us in line with UPC around the EU. THere are absolutely no indications that this will happen though. I am just hopeing against hope.

TheDrunkenBrain

Yep got the same letter, not really worried though (might try to scale back to under 6GB a day . Seriously though I would like to make a couple of points here:-
1 I'm on the 6mb pack which has a download cap of 40GB per month and the letter assures me I should be using under 1GB per day, to which months are they referring and on what calendar?
2 The Cap is a little ridiculous, whilst I freely admit some people would construe my usage as abuse, I want to see episodes of (insert your own shows here), I do not believe this is totally outside the realms of expected internet usage - I do pay for their max package, I can't do more.
3 Whilst this point may seem pedantic to some and my calculations may be off, but at 6mb always on for thirty days you could download nearly 1900GB(gigaBYTES), this seems monstrous compared to the cap (I know, I know, contention ratio, other people, bla bla bla, but still 1900GB).
4 NTL upload is an utter joke of the most ridiculously large proportions. Please weight in on this at least.
5 As far as I can tell the IBB breeze package at 3mb up and down would suit me better for a moderate increase in price considering the upload and the lack of cap, only worried about the actual bandwidth - it being wireless and trees growing where they do, snow snowing where it does, buildings being built where they are, not to mention low flying planes and the odd zeppelin interfering with my connection - anyone on this package having nasty problems?
6 NTL support - this one goes without saying, I'm more likely to get in contact with chinese dissidents in a chat room hosted by the chinese ministry of secrecy and disappearances.
7 I did not get ANY warning letters, just a disconnect letter, could be my rastafarian postman but I don't think so.

l3rian

TheDrunkenBrain, did you get the same warning letter or a disconnect letter?

TheDrunkenBrain

Disconnect ONLY, and it was the first letter, it arrived today in a friendly looking envelope... little did I know.

kaizersoze

Welcome to September 2006.:)
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054987355

ActorSeeksJob

looks like i made smart move not signing with NTL.the isp im with now seem pretty kool,ive gone over the limit a lot and had no trouble or extra cost.one of my mates went like 80gigs over one month,wud came to around 1.5k if they charged him

Badump

The terms and conditions are there for a reason. You downloading all the time screws up someone else's broadband. You signed up for it and you knew what your were getting so if its anyone's fault its yours. The rules are there, If they cut you off...good riddance...im sure your neighbours wont be complaining. Why should you get special preference.

TheDrunkenBrain

The terms and conditions changed like an Orwellian characature of a communist manifesto. If you want to be lawyerly about it though you are of course right.

TheDrunkenBrain

In other words when I signed up there was no cap.

christophicus

Well then you should not be subject to any cap, unless they made you aware of the changes at some stage and you stayed with them anyway? Even then though im not shure that they are allowed to change the contract .

TheDrunkenBrain

Nope. Never made aware of it by NTL, via email, mail or any other method although I DID become aware of it long before the letter I recieved today arrived. It was through happenstance and not by any intentional NTL communication. Appreciate the comment by the way.

christophicus

No problem man. Now im not a lawyer or anything so dont quote me, but I know that with Mobile phone contracts, they cant change your terms of service,so id say it should be the same with BB. My mom has been on a certain O2 package that they havent done anymore for 6 or 7 years but because thats the contract she singed to they cant take it away form her( its better then any on the current packages).

TheDrunkenBrain

Again man, appreciate the reply. I have the original contract somewhere and will check it out, although I suspect if they sent me this letter they had some sort of 'NTL reserve the right to.... ' clause in there. I will investigate it though, thanks.

Kernel

NTL have been ****e lately, with piss poor torrent speeds and dropped connections. If I get a letter like this, i'm gonna eat the head off one of their phone monkeys and cancel my broadband, and digital TV with them (probably gonna do this in a week or so anyway). Paying a fortune for their ****e service and they are getting too cheeky and taking customers for granted (direct debit, late fees etc.). Vote with your cash people.

Cabaal

TheDrunkenBrain wrote:

In other words when I signed up there was no cap.

curious, when did you sign up?

oceanclub

I got one of the "nasty letters" too. I'm surprised, since (a) I never got one before (b) I don't download _that_ much (a fair bit I admit) and (c) I've been away for 6 weeks out of the last 11.

Rang up customer care to ask about it - Service told me to talk to Sales about the issue (not sure why). When I talked to the girl there, and explained the above, she said she couldn't actually see any note on my account related to the issue, so thought that the letter had been sent in error. Does anyone know if they send these letters without logging it on your care account?

Cheers,

P.

Zirconia

I've also received one of these letters, I'm really annoyed about it. The thing is, that I've subscribed to the broadband max package (6Mb down,512kup and a 40GB download limit).

I specifically got this for the higher download limit. So tell me this then - how can you download anything close to 40GB if you have a daily limit of 1GB; the most you could ever download in a month now becomes 31GB, so I'm paying for the higher package, but only really entitled to the download limit of the standard package - what a rip off!

I would advise anyone else in the same situation to contact the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs and lodge an official complaint.

oceanclub

Originally, it was 40GB _download_, but I believe now they cheekily, and without notifying anyone, consider it a "data transfer" limit, so it counts _uploads_ too. So in the worse case, if you use BitTorrrent fairly, the worst case is that you have a 16GB per month download limit really.

On a tangent, have they managed to explain to anyone why excessive downloading by customers somehow blocks blogspot.com, for example?

P.

TheDrunkenBrain

Cabaal, I have been trying to find my contract and I can't. I can tell you I was one of the first in a 'trial' area in one of the first trial areas in Dublin and have never been disconnected nor has what I've payed changed (roughly the same pricing, never rang up and asked to be bumped, happened automatically, twice if I remember correctly, 1.5 to 3 and from 3 to 6 (does this sound right?)). Would the bumps alter my initial contract?

TheDrunkenBrain

Ps: To give you an idea of how long ago it was the phones were answered on the second or third ring by actual human beings.

00sully

Badump wrote:

The terms and conditions are there for a reason.....

terms that magically change halfway through a contract? "no download limit" circa 2004

terms that dont even make mathematical sense "40gb = 1gb per day" i thought you had to have at least junior cert level pass maths to get a job these days :rolleyes:

terms that are ambiguous "40gb DOWNLOAD limit". cue people getting cut off for exceding 40gb total bandwidth - up & down.

NTL/Chorus/UPC are a bunch of clowns. end of

christophicus

They may have done , im not shure. But since you werent consulted about the upgrades I wouldnt have thought so no.

TheDrunkenBrain wrote:

Ps: To give you an idea of how long ago it was the phones were answered on the second or third ring by actual human beings.

LOl

Noelie

00sully wrote:

terms that magically change halfway through a contract? "no download limit" circa 2004

I'm only with NTL since last summer and was happy untill about 4 weeks ago when torrents suddenly stopped working, well they are only d/l at about 4k on a 3meg line.. Also sites aren't loading and having trouble even getting a connection sometimes.

Anyway back to my point, were you gettng 6meg back in 2004?
If not then by accepting the new increase in speeds you wold also be accepting the new terms and conditions, making your original contract of 2004 void

christophicus

But NTL upgraded the speeds without contacting the customers as far as Im aware.

TheDrunkenBrain

christophicus wrote:

But NTL upgraded the speeds without contacting the customers as far as Im aware.

Yep this is what happened to me, I accepted NOTHING, signed NOTHING, and was notified of NOTHING, I just got silently bumped. I remember at the last bump to 6mb there was talk of it being 10mb, which is what English NTL customers got, I had to do a bandwidth check (multiple ones to figure out what the hell I was on after that).

christophicus

Yeah no one in Ireland is on 10Mb with NTL , it would be the 6 Mb package that your on. LOL if everyone was on the 10 Mb package now, I'd say the network would completely fall over.

Badump

00sully wrote:

terms that magically change halfway through a contract? "no download limit" circa 2004

terms that dont even make mathematical sense "40gb = 1gb per day" i thought you had to have at least junior cert level pass maths to get a job these days :rolleyes:

terms that are ambiguous "40gb DOWNLOAD limit". cue people getting cut off for exceding 40gb total bandwidth - up & down.

NTL/Chorus/UPC are a bunch of clowns. end of

oh so would you prefer if they came out and said you have 1.29GB a day? Its just a approx figure. a guideline to give you an idea of what they are offering. I know when NTL changed to having a cap, i recieved a letter along with everyone else i know who has NTL stating that we now had a 40GB cap. BB companies are forced to do this when they expand so much becaue they now have so many customers per area they can't have YOU for instance constantly downloading and ruining other peoples Broadband speeds/connection. Which is what people going over there cap is doing. That is why you are all getting letters. Yet you come on here and complain that you have been victimised? You are the people that are making people your neighbours have slow speeds....is that fair? I know NTL are going through changeover/routing problems, but that affects you for no reason a your screwing up other peoples BB. If ntl are shocking then so are you.

The smaller companies like smart etc. can offer a no download cap becasue it wont affect other people.

What annoys/baffles me is that if you people are coming on here and comlaining about NTL saying there BB is crap and that there customer service is terrible....why dont you change BB companies? by the way, do you really think NTL dont read these threads? Do you think comments on other posts like " ring NTL up and say you have no service, or an email problem, then when they ring you back complain about your slow speeds!" (post from another thread) Do you you think any of this helps? NTL/UPC will just use this as proof and "get to you when there ready". Do you not think that they are trying to sort all these problems out?

lastly, let me say that i do know people who have had trouble with NTL and i do realise that NTL have been slow in resolving BB problems. But thats what probably happens when your merging companies. If you dont like it...leave!

RangeR

Badump wrote:

snip

Do you work for NTL / Chorus / UPC ?

Badump

IrishTLR wrote:

Do you work for NTL / Chorus / UPC ?

lol no!

TheDrunkenBrain

Wondering that myself

Badump you make the ridiculous point that for some reason NTL/UPC should be babied because other broadband services have an infrastructure which allows no caps.
Bull****.
1.29 GB you say, well as one gent pointed out earlier the 1gb includes up and down so it's closer to the mark that it seems at first glance but YES damn right I would like an exact figure, I get an exact BILL.
Received a letter about having a cap - BULL****.
It has been mentioned before but a means of measuring this would seem only reasonable to any REASONABLE man.
As for ringing NTL, how the HELL do I go about that, please explain this to me.
As for being slow in resolving problems because the companies are merging, it's hardly the bleedin' customers fault now is it?