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broadband usage gone sky high

JonoH
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Registered: ‎29-09-2011

Re: broadband usage gone sky high

It's time I ate the humble pie.

 

When looking into a few of your accounts we can see there is an issue, The two systems we use to record usage VMBU (that we share with you guys and CBC that we bill from) should show the same numbers but they are showing different amounts of usage. We're restarting the VMBU servers and will monitor to see if that fixes the issue.

 

As always I'll keep you informed.

 Jono H
 Plusnet Community Manager
jab1
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Re: broadband usage gone sky high

Cheers, @JonoH. Not really a problem for anyone on unlimited, but it could make some people worried that they had an unwelcome visitor using their connection - not me though, I know what to look for.

John
Browni
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Re: broadband usage gone sky high

Now this looks totally different!

10pm on Saturday so obviously incomplete for one day.10pm on Saturday so obviously incomplete for one day.What are your figures like now @ash10?

ash10
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Re: broadband usage gone sky high

my figures are the same. my question raised and plusnet say the figures are not accurate as they don't monitor people on unlimited so give up. Why do they show them on a monitor if they don't actually monitor them.My figures show 100gb used since 17th jan and my laptop phone says 12 gb used to plusnets are a load of rubbish. Cant believe  the rubbish peddled by plusnet staff

jelv
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Re: broadband usage gone sky high

It's in Plusnet's interest to give inflated figures for those on unlimited - if people are considering an alternative high quality provider where usage is not unlimited they may think their usage is too high!

jelv (a.k.a Spoon Whittler)
   Why I have left Plusnet (warning: long post!)   
Broadband: Andrews & Arnold Home::1 (FTTC 80/20)
Line rental: Pulse 8 Home Line Rental (£14.40/month)
Mobile: iD mobile (£4/month)
ash10
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Re: broadband usage gone sky high

why does admin not answer this question about sky high usage when its evident the figures are totally wrong. can I have a answer please from staff or admin.I have gone through all the change password things and there is nothing wrong.

JonoH
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Re: broadband usage gone sky high


 

@ash10 wrote:

why does admin not answer this question about sky high usage when its evident the figures are totally wrong. can I have a answer please from staff or admin.

Hi Ash, we have an ongoing problem with the customer facing usage monitoring, it's raised with our incident management team however it's very low priority.  For now though I've private messaged you this months usage so far

 Jono H
 Plusnet Community Manager
EnglishMohican
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Re: broadband usage gone sky high

I take it that "customer facing usage monitoring" is the figures that appear when we try to look at our usage. I further take it that what you mean is that "real usage" is monitored in some separate way that we, the customers, do not have access to.

This matters to me as I am on a limited package (60Gb).

Are you saying that the figures that I have displayed when I look at usage are total spam, 5% out, 10% out, high or low?

Or are customers on limited packages treated differently so that the figures we get are meaningful? - Seems unlikely.

Why do you have two systems? Do you really count the data passing in two different places?  Seems utterly crazy to do that.

kjpetrie
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Re: broadband usage gone sky high

It is worrying for those of us on limited (in my case 10GB/month) packages. How are we supposed to check our usage and take meaningful decisions to stay within the limit if we can't trust the data? What if we are billed when the data we can access shows we haven't gone over the limit? It would reduce customer confidence badly.

That said, there are unknown factors that can push usage up. In my case, around a year or so ago I noticed my usage had gone up threefold and couldn't understand why. The breakdown showed most of it was e-mail which made no sense as I only received about ten text e-mails per day, and I was using around 5GB/month on e-mail.

It eventually turned out that although my POP3 client was set up to delete messages from the server after download this wasn't happening, so every ten minutes it would download several years' worth of headers to check for the new messages. I changed to IMAP and laboriously deleted all the old read messages from the server using webmail. My usage dropped right back.

So, it is worthwhile checking what's really happening if usage seems to rise. It might just be something wrong at your end. In my case, I don't know whether the client was failing to send the delete request or the server to act on it, but something was wrong at one end or the other.

 

Browni
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Re: broadband usage gone sky high

It's seriously worrying when Plusnet's figures are showing 1.4TB of usage in a month!

@JonoH can you provide me with my monthly usage figures for 2017 please?

JonoH
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Re: broadband usage gone sky high


@Browni wrote:

It's seriously worrying when Plusnet's figures are showing 1.4TB of usage in a month!

Nothing to worry about. We know it's not right and we've said that we're looking into it.

 

@JonoH can you provide me with my monthly usage figures for 2017 please?


I've sent you what we have

 Jono H
 Plusnet Community Manager
jelv
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Re: broadband usage gone sky high


@kjpetrie wrote:

It is worrying for those of us on limited (in my case 10GB/month) packages. How are we supposed to check our usage and take meaningful decisions to stay within the limit if we can't trust the data? What if we are billed when the data we can access shows we haven't gone over the limit? It would reduce customer confidence badly.


In the past Plusnet have refunded excess usage charges where this has happened and the user has complained.

Perhaps someone from Plusnet would confirm this would be done if this were to happen now?

jelv (a.k.a Spoon Whittler)
   Why I have left Plusnet (warning: long post!)   
Broadband: Andrews & Arnold Home::1 (FTTC 80/20)
Line rental: Pulse 8 Home Line Rental (£14.40/month)
Mobile: iD mobile (£4/month)
JonoH
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Re: broadband usage gone sky high


@jelv wrote:


In the past Plusnet have refunded excess usage charges where this has happened and the user has complained.

Perhaps someone from Plusnet would confirm this would be done if this were to happen now?

To be clear, if you're on a metered product any emails you get about approaching your usage cap are correct so please use these to manage your usage accordingly, remember we also offer a smart cap so you can cap usage at what level you're comfortable with. If however you do happen to go over by a small amount and get charged we're happy to look at this on a case by case basis.


We're also happy to look at options towards moving to an unlimited product for customers who are interested in it.

 Jono H
 Plusnet Community Manager
EnglishMohican
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Re: broadband usage gone sky high

@JonoH wrote:-   "Nothing to worry about. We know it's not right and we've said that we're looking into it."

 

Based on progress with the billing system Plusnet are very good at looking at things.

As for the "approaching your limit" emails, on the two occasions I have received them, I was not impressed. It was a long time ago and I am not going to search back to refresh my memory, but on one occasion the email was so late there was nothing that could be done about it (I did not actually go over but more by luck than judgement). The other time with a week to go, I still had a third of my allowance left so hardly helpful that time either.

Of course that assumes that long ago when this happened, the customer facing system my comments are based on was correct - maybe it has never been right.

As for moving to an unlimited package - the move would undoubtedly entail an 18month contract - so not a chance. If I change contract it will be to a supplier that can make their systems work.

JonoH
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Re: broadband usage gone sky high


@EnglishMohican wrote:

 

As for moving to an unlimited package - the move would undoubtedly entail an 18month contract - so not a chance. If I change contract it will be to a supplier that can make their systems work.


I'd be happy to look at moving you onto an unlimited product without a new contract, drop me a PM if you're interested with your username and Ill see what we can do.

 Jono H
 Plusnet Community Manager