Could BT be cheating me?

dandy-candy

I'm on BT broadband option 1 and the last quarterly bill chareged me a whopping £50 extra for going over the allowed usage. So I blew up the kids and said no more going online during the week from now on - only weekends. I downloaded a meter to keep an eye on them but I had been warned it wouldn't pick up on Xbox live usage. Mid November I rang BT to check how I was doing and they said fine - not gone over yet. On December 27th I got an email warning my usage was up to 7Gb (i'm allowed 10Gb) but there was only 4 days left to go so looked good. Then on 6th Jan I got an email saying I had used 13Gb instead of 10Gb but not to worry and I wouldn't be charged. I was totally confused how I could have suddenly used 6Gb in 4 days when I had followed the same usage pattern as I had done all the other 27 days in Dec. Now today I have just got in my bill saying I have to cough up an extra £45 for using 45Gb extra over the last quarter! They say I went over 33Gb in Oct and 12Gb in Nov. I simply can't believe this seeing as how we have cut back on our usage and they never sent me any emails warning I was near my limit in Oct or Nov! I seriously am wondering if BT just makes up these figures and don't know what to do about this all. Also my contract with them ran out in May 2009 so can I just tell them to get stuffed about these extra charges or am I still legally obliged to keep to the 10Gb limit contract or not?

savemoney

JUST A THOUGHT BUT YOU DoNT HAVE A INSECURE WIRELESS NETWORK DO YOU

sorry caps was on by mistake

dandy-candy

No - and I also turn it off at the wall when we aren't using it

savemoney

I only asked no need to be confused

If you have open wifi people can use your network for downloading

dylanuk

dandy-candy wrote: »

Also my contract with them ran out in May 2009 so can I just tell them to get stuffed about these extra charges or am I still legally obliged to keep to the 10Gb limit contract or not?

Unfortunately you can't really just tell them to get stuffed because in theory they've provided you a service with said costs and you now owe them however much for it.

But, as your contract is up - I would seriously consider switching broadband providers and just getting an unlimited package. A lot of deals are much cheaper than BT broadband and offer unlimited downloads - http://www.chooseisp.co.uk/compare/broadband/unlimited.asp

For example, you could get O2 broadband for £12.50 (even cheaper if you've got an O2 mobile) with unlimited downloads.

Or, you could get Be Value for just £7.50 - although this has a 40GB usage limit.