Eircom: Download limit exceeded - mistake?

jc2008

According to the Eircom Usage Stats, I have downloaded over 52GB since the start of the month - our limit is 30GB.

This can't be true - it's only the 10th and I certainly wasn't downloading heavily. I've very panicky as it will cost hundreds if this is true.

Should I ring them? Will it go away by itself if it is a mistake?

I'm so worried, I don't know what to do.

Thanks for reading.

yomamasflavour

jc2008 wrote: »

According to the Eircom Usage Stats, I have downloaded over 52GB since the start of the month - our limit is 30GB.

This can't be true - it's only the 10th and I certainly wasn't downloading heavily. I've very panicky as it will cost hundreds if this is true.

Should I ring them? Will it go away by itself if it is a mistake?

I'm so worried, I don't know what to do.

Thanks for reading.

It depends, did you recently (i.e in the last month) sign up for Eircom NGB?

If you didn't - stop worrying, Eircom generally don't charge for going over the Cap.

wheresmybeaver

yomamasflavour wrote: »

It depends, did you recently (i.e in the last month) sign up for Eircom NGB?

If you didn't - stop worrying, Eircom generally don't charge for going over the Cap.

Even then, the maximum charge for going over your limit is something like an extra 30 quid. If you're on one of the new NGB plans. It doesn't look like they're going to charge people for going over on the old plans (for now).

Johnboy1951

jc2008 wrote: »

According to the Eircom Usage Stats, I have downloaded over 52GB since the start of the month - our limit is 30GB.

This can't be true - it's only the 10th and I certainly wasn't downloading heavily. I've very panicky as it will cost hundreds if this is true.

Should I ring them? Will it go away by itself if it is a mistake?

I'm so worried, I don't know what to do.

Thanks for reading.

Ring them immediately and have them check if you are sure that nothing has changed on your end.

Is it possible that someone else is using your connection?

pwd

If you have a wireless connection and never changed from your default password it would be very easy for someone to use your connection. There is a program easily available online which cracks eircom default password based on the phone numbers, as dispayed in the connection names.

jc2008

Hi guys - thanks for the help.

As I live in quite a rural area, and know my neighbours, I don't think the problem arises with people stealing my broadband (although I'm not ruling it out). We have never changed our password (which is WEP, which afaik is very easy to crack), but we did change the SSID a while back from eircomxxxx_xxxx to an actual name (but I realise this doesn't actually protect us from connection stealers).

I haven't signed up for the NGB. This is what the 'graph' looks like. Ironically I did download a big file (roughly 600mb) between the 4th, 5th and 6th but definitely nothing that would push the download to 184% of the limit within 9 days!

Richard tea

Interesting observation OP, I never go over 40GB ever, but last month my stats showed that I downloaded 56GB I put it down to maybe watching a few HD youtube videos more than I usually would, But Ill def keep a closer eye on it this month just to compare.

probe

jc2008 wrote: »

Hi guys - thanks for the help.

As I live in quite a rural area, and know my neighbours,

If you live in a rural area, your connection is unlikely to be more than a few MB/sec. Which would imply that you would have to be downloading for more than 10 hours a day, flat out, to run up this traffic between 5 and 8 April! WiFi has a range of about 100m depending on walls etc. How close are your neighbours? Have they suddenly turned into net-addicts and have no broadband themselves? Has a car been parked outside your house for days on end with a guy in the vehicle downloading stuff? If so, did he knock on the door and ask you if you would mind charging up his laptop? :-)

This is likely a screw up by eircom, or a "terrorism" attempt by them in the hope that you would post here to put people off using their internet connection, aside perhaps from receiving the odd email, without attachments of course. You have sinned my son by downloading that monster 600 MB file. Bend over and take a hiding. We are the bi-nopoly of broadband in Ireland. We and UPC own you, jointly and severally.

Reason #12345 for country-wide FTTP with open access and a wide choice of service providers.

probe

Richard tea wrote: »

Interesting observation OP, I never go over 40GB ever, but last month my stats showed that I downloaded 56GB I put it down to maybe watching a few HD youtube videos more than I usually would, But Ill def keep a closer eye on it this month just to compare.

You naughty boy. Your penance - no youtube for the next month. And a diet of bread and water.

VERYinterested

With the advent of NGB in my area (Ballyboden Exchange in South Co. Dublin) I have been keeping an eye on my stats over the last couple of weeks. They too seem to have jumped a lot lately. The stats are only available from January this year and we used 60% of our 30gb allowance for Jan & Feb. From March 5 we seem to have been using the internet very heavily and used 110% of our monthly allowance.

For April, we have used 84% already with 11 days left in the month. I thought it was my two lads gaming online, but they aren't doing anything differently this month that they didn't do over the last 6 months. They both work and were out socialising at the weekend so the net was virtually unused for the weekend just gone.

I checked and the wireless feature is WPA enabled and I can see the router when I am watching TV so if it was being used illegally I would have seen it flash. But we still managed to use up 4gb at the weekend! I am very suspicious of the 'increase' in our usage, I wonder is it a ploy to get people to sign up to the 'unlimited' usage package for peace of mind? Has anyone else noticed an unusual increase in their usage over the last 6 weeks since this new product was announced?

bokkenspiel

u could have signed up to sumtin which downloads stuff automatically so u might not kno about it
bummer if this happened u