topic Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased? in Plusnet Feedback

Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

christmas — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 05:26:42 GMT

Internet pages are no longer just text with a few pictures, now there are animations, video clips with sound, fancy animated graphics and advertising which eat up the data allowance.
Is it time for Plusnet to come into the new age and up the basic allowance from 10Gb to 15Gb a month?
I'm not one to download videos and just basically visit the same sites daily but in recent times the allowance usage has shot up often resulting in an email from PlusNet notification that peak-time usage is coming close to the 10Gb limit.
To me being charged £5.00 per 5Gb of additional usage is not value for money and I've never gone over the 10Gb allowance.
Paying an extra £5.00 a month and getting many gigabites of allowance of which the vast majority would never be used, for me that is an option very similar to the £5.00 for an additional 5Gb.
In these austere times should Plusnet consider a basic usage allowance of 15Gb for an additional 50p a month or possibly 12Gb?

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

orbrey — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 07:50:38 GMT

Hi christmas,
Understand what you're saying but unfortunately from our side things aren't that simple (plus of course these times of austerity aren't just affecting customers - they're affecting businesses too!).
Changing a product isn't as simple as just adding more usage I'm afraid, as it's all been carefully planned out and changing anything throws those plans off. It's worth bearing in mind that the product up from Value is about the same price as Value plus an extra 5GB - so for that same amount you're getting 60GB usage. I realise this isn't ideal for yourself but for people who do use more there's no denying the value there.

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

christmas — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 15:52:52 GMT

I've never been over the 10Gb so the £5 extra a month would be a waste of money BUT I can see the data usage has significantly increased for no apparent reason on my part.
For example today I've only been looking at pages to read text but the allowance used is already nearly 300Mb, I assume because of the onscreen ads and whiz bangs on the pages.
Quite soon I think Plusnet will have to increase its basic usage allowance or scrap it for new customers as I can't see 10Gb being enough if my current usage is anything to go by.

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

Oldjim — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 15:59:00 GMT

I have just had to move from Value to Extra for the same reason

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

w23 — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 09:31:00 GMT

Quote from: christmas
..because of the onscreen ads and whiz bangs on the pages.

Wouldn't a browser ad-blocker actually prevent download of some of this 'rubbish' and therefore reduce the bandwidth consumed in loading the page?

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

davidj66 — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 13:41:29 GMT

Agree 100% with the OP - I now have to watch my usage carefully -recently had to explain to visitors that they couldn't use their I -Pad to watch catch up TV on my connection because of the usage limitations - they greeted this with a mixture of merriment and incredulity as they are on "unlimited" connections with Sky and O2 - In answer to the last post I've installed Ad block plus and NoScript to minimise this junk running when I open pages -unfortunately some pages are effectively unuseable unless you give them permissions to run some scripts and some web sites now even throw up a message if they detect Ad blockers running.

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

christmas — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 20:52:39 GMT

Having printed off the past month's usage there some dramatic variations, the lowest day being 158Mb the highest 961Mb, why so high I've no idea.
Today I've been keeping a check on usage, logged off just before 8am.
10.30am logged on and checked usage, 39.71Kb
Briefly visited a site which is populated with video ads and a computer manufacter website, looked at 5 or 6 pages of details of a computer. Logged off.
11.24 usage now stood at 14.05Mb.
Visited the computer website again and looked at the same pages as before. Logged off.
11:54 usage now 20.1Mb

Did virtually nothing and clocked up 20Mb of data transfer within minutes.
The monthly usage states 80% web, 20% streaming.
Is there s/w available to display onscreen a count of the data usage as it happens, to possible identify which sites or pages are eating the most into the usage allowance?

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

w23 — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 21:13:43 GMT

This?
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/tbbmeter.html
A possible culprit for unexpected useage is Windows (and other) updates.

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

jelv — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 21:28:09 GMT

http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/ is far better than tbbmeter!

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

christmas — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 06:48:23 GMT

Thank you for the links.
I tend to set options to notify updates rather than automatically instal but I'm not sure if they are being downloaded in the background anyway ready to be installed.
I'm astonished how may times Adobe update Flash Player & PDF Reader.
With so much software only available online the computer is going to end up at some stage spending all its time updating the various software and the usage gets eaten up before I get a chance to use it.
Well am at 9.9Gb today and counting.

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

Heloman — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 19:07:28 GMT

Quote from: Oldjim
I have just had to move from Value to Extra for the same reason

I decided to do the same for the same reason, but have been unable to do so on-line!
Six times now over three days I have gone through the Account Change routine, but when I click on the "Change my products " button it just takes me back to square one, every time
Maybe PN have run out of bandwidth and don't want me to upgrade......

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

christmas — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 04:32:41 GMT

Well ended up a total usage of for the month of 11.5Gb I'm suprised how little of that was overnight usage 1.56Gb.
Something I notice is from 22 June the daily peak time usage appears to have doubled, is there someway of looking back to see online times and sites visited to see why there was a sudden surge in usage?
Having read this forum it looks like allowances across all products may need to be increased to cope with how the internet has changed.
I feel as computers and the internet have become faster website designers are no longer feel restricted to the size of graphic and video files on web pages.
Broadcasters and publishers are encouraging the use of the internet to view programmes and exclusive videos without any consideration to data usage by individuals as they don't bear the cost themselves.
Maybe broadband providers need to have a word with website designers and publishers to make them aware of data restrictions many users face.

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

christmas — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 10:41:57 GMT

There's definately something not right....
Between 6am and 8am today I went to the usual site I visit and downloaded a software file and installed it...total usage under 11Mb
Between 8am and 10am two files were downloaded an update 20Mb and one of 8Mb....checking usage at 10:30 peak usage had gone from Zero to 168Mb.
Have just been online to check an order and at 11:30 the peak usage shows 257Mb!!!
Something don't add up, almost 100Mb in less than an hour of no or very little access to the internet?

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

christmas — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 10:45:49 GMT

In the time it took to type my previous message (10 mins) peak usage has increased by 13Mb to 271Mb....mmmmm.

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

James — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 12:26:40 GMT

Bear in mind that the usage meter does not update in real time. It's generally a few hours behind.

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

christmas — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 14:13:44 GMT

Hello Jameseh...
Which would make it worse, as the figures are those shown are as of 11:30am for peak usage since 8:00am.
At 15:00 the peak usage shows a staggering 386.51Mb since 8.00am !!!!
I installed the Think Broaband software on a suspect computer, accessed the Plusnet usage page and just sat there 10-15mins, the software showed downloads totalling about 20Mb.
Went to Google News and the software immediately show a jump of 14Mb in downloads, I closed Internet Explorer but there was another surge of activity taking the total downloads to 50mb in about 30mins.
Does the Think Broadband software only indicate the data flow on the computer it's running on, at the moment it's showing litlle or no usage.

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

christmas — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 14:18:55 GMT

While typing the previous message peak usage has gone from 386.51Mb to 393.06Mb.
Is it possible for someone to piggy back an account or a cross wire along the way show someone elses usage on my account?

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

Steve — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 14:25:11 GMT

The amount of times this subject has been brought up over the last couple years and STILL plus net does not listen to their customers Is ridiculous. They must be making good money seeing as they are not willing to change things.

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

James — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 14:28:32 GMT

Steve,
I'm not responsible to designing Plusnets products (which is probably a reason why we are still trading) but I see a lot of people asking for essentially more broadband without considering the cost implications associated we it. We buy bandwidth. More bandwidth costs more money. You seem to be essentially accusing us of not giving you more for no additional cost.
We absolutely will review usage in our next product refresh, but I think that everyone needs to consider that giving you guys more GBs costs us more £s and margin on broadband are extremely tight as it is.
We'd LOVE to give our customers more stuff, but unfortunately we have to keep the beanies happy and not sell a product at a loss.

Re: Time for basic usage allowances to be increased?

Steve — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 14:33:03 GMT

Quote from: Jameseh
You seem to be essentially accusing us of not giving you more for no additional cost.

No not at all, Just saying that this has been brought up time and time again but nothing changes. I understand the costs but that could be added Into a new bundle at a reasonable price.