Meteor Broadband to Go

PeterKelly!

Just had a fairly frustrating experience trying to get a customer service representative to help me with my broadband woes. I bought a meteor pay as you go stick on december 23rd/10 and then bought a 30 day pass which has a data allowance of 7.5 GB. The broadband worked just fine up until lastnite when i was seemingly cutoff. I checked the usage meter which said i had used a total of 4.5 GB. As there is no other meter available I only have that to go on. I rang them up today and was told rather harshly by a romanian rep that i had used 7.5 GB's and that if i wanted to use my stick i would have to top up! I hung up on her and rang back to hear an irish voice on the phone. However not only did she repeat what her romanian colleague had told me she also told me that i could not purchase another 30 day pass until the other one expired on january 22nd so i could only top up every day for 2.99!!! so it would cost me 30 euro for those ten days and a pitiful daily allowance...I asked if they would top me up for
ten days to keep me going. This was swiftly denied. Does anyone know what my rights are here??? Am I completely helpless here?

Nody

You exceeded your limit and you want them to top you up for free? Sorry, will never happen.

Your best bet is to buy a package with a higher limit but if you do 7.5GB in 20 days I'd be careful with any PAYG set up.

jor el

PeterKelly! wrote: »

Does anyone know what my rights are here??? Am I completely helpless here?

You have the right to stop posting in a xenophobic fashion for one. You should also read the terms and conditions for the service you signed up to, and you'd see that Meteor won't allow you to buy a monthly pass until the current month has passed, regardless of whether the limit is used or not.

Gulliver

Is that 4.5GB download only? The total usage is taken into consideration. Although 3GB upload seems unlikely on midband, it could happen. I'll bet if you ask for a breakdown of your upload/download total, you'll be told "I don't have access to that information". Also, as the software says "Totals are indicative only", meaning they have themselves covered.

The other thing about Broadband to Go is that the 30 Day pass expires at midnight (00:00 of Jan 22nd for example) If you try and purchase a new pass straight away, it'll tell you your current pass is still active. Try to connect, though and it'll take €2.99 from your account. You'll have to wait till the next day to purchase the 30 Day pass. It's a really, really bad system.

I doubt you'll get any satisfaction from them.

Gulliver

jor el wrote: »

You have the right to stop posting in a xenophobic fashion for one. You should also read the terms and conditions for the service you signed up to, and you'd see that Meteor won't allow you to buy a monthly pass until the current month has passed, regardless of whether the limit is used or not.

Well, taking the OP at face value, he did say that by his reckoning, he'd only used 4.5GB of his 7.5GB allowance. I think that's he's getting "xenophobic" about!

drunkmonkey

Just get a different pre pay broadband sim and top it up, there free as far as I know. Simple fix.

ct5amr2ig1nfhp

It says on the Meteor site that if you use your monthly allowance you will automatically be moved to the 2.99/day tariff for the remainder of the 30 days.

You never said which usage meter you checked, your own (third party) or Meteors? Always good to have your own, just in case.
Btw, the data allowance applies to both upload and download usage.

You could always buy a 2nd SIM and switch between them.
Or move to another provider with larger allowances on a PAYG broadband tariff.

PeterKelly!

Thanks for the replies even though some were just skimmers who accused me of being a xenophobe , another skimmer thought i had used 3gb's in uploads in 3 weeks.

Just to clarify the object of this post was not to give out about foreign nationals working in this country. I am not a xenophobe nor am I in any way a racist. I was simply looking to hear from people in the same situation as me , and if they had gotten through to anyone at meteor that may have been more accommodating than the two reps I spoke with yesterday. Had a long rant written out yesterday but ill keep this one short.

Is anyone in the same situation as me out there on boards? Is there a way to get through to someone above customer service that may have the authority to go the extra mile to satisfy my beef with meteor. I can understand some people think I'm in dreamland expecting them to help me here but I don't think I'm being unreasonable. The PAYG stick they sold me came with a data usage meter that currently displays a total usage figure of 4.5 GB (YES THAT IS TOTAL DOWNLOAD AND UPLOAD). There is no other meter available to the customer on their website. It is not acceptable to tell someone after the fact that if they wanted to know the true figure that they have to ring customer support and ask for it. It is also not acceptable to tell a customer that because their data allowance has been used up , so as a punishment for this heinous crime you will have to pay 30 euros over the next ten days before you can buy another 30 day pass....

Paulw

PeterKelly! wrote: »

It is also not acceptable to tell a customer that because their data allowance has been used up , so as a punishment for this heinous crime you will have to pay 30 euros over the next ten days before you can buy another 30 day pass....

It is not a "punishment", it's a condition. If you read the terms and conditions of the service you've subscribed to, you would have seen that and been aware of it.

If you hit your limit after 29 days, then would you be moaning about paying €2.99 for the one day?

If you used your whole 7.5gb allowance in one day, who's fault would that be? Meteors?

You could query why there is such a large difference between the data usage meter you have access to, and their figure. But, I can't see Meteor giving you anything other than information.

PeterKelly!

Paulw wrote: »

You could query why there is such a large difference between the data usage meter you have access to, and their figure. But, I can't see Meteor giving you anything other than information.

Paul thanks for your input. This was my query! I've gone over what the reply was twice so I'm not going to repeat myself....

jor el

PeterKelly! wrote: »

Thanks for the replies even though some were just skimmers who accused me of being a xenophobe , another skimmer thought i had used 3gb's in uploads in 3 weeks.

Just to clarify the object of this post was not to give out about foreign nationals working in this country. I am not a xenophobe nor am I in any way a racist.

What's a skimmer? The nationality of the rep is irrelevant, and there was no valid reason to even mention it, so why did you do it?

PeterKelly! wrote: »

Is anyone in the same situation as me out there on boards? Is there a way to get through to someone above customer service that may have the authority to go the extra mile to satisfy my beef with meteor. I can understand some people think I'm in dreamland expecting them to help me here but I don't think I'm being unreasonable.

All the info you need is here, and you can check your balance if you text ‘MBB balance’ to 50104.
http://www.meteor.ie/support/bbtg/payg_stick/

If you've used your 7.5GB monthly allowance, then no one (Meteor employee or Boards member) can help you. The limit is there for a reason. You can pay the daily rate, buy a 2nd SIM, change provider, or do without. Without proof, your usage is whatever Meteor say it is, and I can't see them changing their mind about it just because you disagree.

drunkmonkey

jor el wrote: »

Without proof, your usage is whatever Meteor say it is

How would you go about proving any different, even with your own counter i'd say they'd still argue that their counter was correct.
Is there any fail safe data counter that's industry approved?

Paulw

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Is there any fail safe data counter that's industry approved?

No.

Each provider (Vodafone, Meteor, O2, Tesco, 3) all count data their own way (although it should all be the same anyway).

I don't see how there should be a difference between what the customer counter shows and what the operator is seeing, unless one isn't counting the same thing as the other.

PeterKelly!

the nationality was relevant as I struggled to understand what she was saying to me and when I asked to speak to a supervisor she freaked out and started fighting with me on the phone, she refused to put her supervisor on or even another rep and I had to hang up and go through the whole rigamarole of the answering machine...rep answers... ok i'll put you on hold...blah blah blah 20 minutes later I'm still seething.

skimmer- fairly self explanatory you skimmed through the post saw something negative about a Romanian and for your own reasons decided to slam me for it.

jor el

drunkmonkey wrote: »

How would you go about proving any different,

With great difficulty, and possibly unsuccessfully. If you had a monitor like DUMeter, you would know yourself what your usage was, and if it was vastly different to what the ISP claim, then you could ask them to investigate it, or ask for your usage logs for the period in question. On my Vodafone bill, I can see what days I logged on, and how much data was used each day. They don't give you this information on a pre-pay package, but they should still have it themselves. If you ask for it, they have to provide it (but may charge for doing so too).

PeterKelly! wrote: »

skimmer- fairly self explanatory you skimmed through the post saw something negative about a Romanian and for your own reasons decided to slam me for it.

I read your entire post, saw no mention of the rep freaking out, no mention of having difficulty understanding what was said, but you mention a nationality (how do you even know what nationality she was, did you ask?) without any reason, which is generally done out of racism, and I told you that had you read the T&Cs of the service then you would has seen what the limit was and that they charge €2.99 a day for the remainder of the month if you wish to continue using it.

Unless Meteor have made a mistake in the usage calculation, you have no rights at all. You can request your daily usage logs to see what was used, and when.

PeterKelly!

Well i was trying to keep it short bud , I explained previously that i'm not a racist or whatever you kryptonians call it....let's stay on topic and not antagonise the op please

Anything helpful to add would be appreciated otherwise stfu and go back to your fortress.

jor el

PeterKelly! wrote: »

Anything helpful to add would be appreciated otherwise stfu and go back to your fortress.

jor el wrote: »

Unless Meteor have made a mistake in the usage calculation, you have no rights at all. You can request your daily usage logs to see what was used, and when.

If you actually read my responses, you'd see I've answered 3 times now. Continue ignoring the truth all you like, but it won't help you.

NewApproach

To be fair to the OP, its completely reasonable to rather speak to an Irish person on the phone than a foreigner when English isn't their first language.

Ringing up call centres is tedious at the best of times.

PeterKelly!

actually tried to get another sim yesterday, to no avail...meteor don't give out payg broadband sims, only with purchase of another stick can you get a new sim card. normal meteor sims dont work in the sticks....

drunkmonkey

next option is to unlock the modem and get a 3G data sim from another network.

dudara

PeterKelly! wrote: »

Anything helpful to add would be appreciated otherwise stfu and go back to your fortress.

Please do not tell another poster to "stfu" - it is in breach of charter rules and extremely impolite.

You have a problem here. The meter supplied with the stick is telling you one figure and Support are telling you another figure. There is an approximately 75% difference between the two, so something is clearly wrong.

As other posters have said, the next step is to request usage figures. This should start to help figuring out the difference.

sullokb

Ah the ould racist angle. I too have a problem ringing an Irish company support service and having to talk to someone in broken english about something technical. Now if that makes me a racist sorreee. I think you should just get the device unlocked and use a different provider each time. Easy and you wont have to deal with what you correctly describe as skimmers with nothing better to do.