Sky Broadband Everyday Lite Users Beware!

lilypea

I just unwittngly execeeded my Everday Lite usage this month for the 2nd time in 6 months and thought I'd share some lessons learnt.

With an Everday Lite Broadband service Sky automatically upgrade you to their Unlimited serivce and of course charge for this when you go over your 2gb limit twice in 6 months. This is fair enough, it is their policy and they do tell you up front. But what I found unfair is what they don't tell you ....

1) You don't get notified the first time you go over your limit, so the first time you know about it is when you go over for the second time and they email and write to tell you they've upgraded you. (You can set email notifications for 50%,70% and 90% but not to tell you if you've gone over.)

2) Once you've been upgraded to unlimited you can't see your usage graph any more. So in my case I had no way of double checking when I went over previously.

2) I only went over my 2gb by 0.01 on the first occassion but this still counts. As it was such a small amount it was impossible to see on the usage graph so I wasn't even aware I went over, so I was less careful than I would have been about going over again.

3) If you get upgraded to unlimited and want to downgrade because you know you will not regularly need more than 2gb you have to wait 30 days before you can place the order to cancel. There's no point you ringing before because they will not accept your request. But you do need to make sure you ring to cancel on the exact day or you may have to pay extra for unlimited for another month.

4) You may think that as you are stuck paying for the upgraded service for at least a month you might as well use it to its full potential then downgrade at the end of the 30 days. However, if you do this and exceed 2gb of usage they will not let you downgrade because they will say your usage shows you are likely to go over!!!

I ended up complaining to a manager about this who eventually agreed to call me back in a month and refund my £7.50 providing I stay within the 2gb limit. But I really had to push for a call back having been passed to 3 different people, cut off and rung again.

So I guess the message is keep a really close eye on your usage if you are on this package using the usage tools and if it looks like you are getting close to the limit and don't want to risk an automatic upgrade ease off until after your next bill.

It is really easy to go over if you watch the odd thing on iPlayer or Sky player. But you should be ok if you mainly just surf net and email.

Hope this helps

Coopdivi

Plusnet is £6.49 for 10GB plus you can download as much as you like between midnight and 8 am.

2GB is a ridiculously low limit so why put up with it?

penrhyn

I guess, because its free.

Sky broadband unlimited is £12.50 / month. £7.50 / month with Sky Talk (plus line rental)

I recently pointed out to another moneysaver that watching the Eurovision on the iPlayer would use 2.2Gb on its own.

chris1973

2GB is nothing in this day and age, you should get that free with every daily newspaper purchase or loaf of bread.

We live in an internet driven society with webmasters intent to impress with bandwidth hungry flash animation, huge digital images and embedded video content which begins to load as soon as we land on it, whether we want it to or not.

Even this forum isn't exactly low-res or slow connection friendly, access it on dial up speeds to see what I mean.

Also bear in mind about software and windows updates on your PC, as these, collectively can burn literally hundreds of MB of bandwidth every month just silently updating themselves in the background - the more dynamic software you have installed and permitted access to the 'net, the more updates they make and the more bandwidth consumed

With the increase in streamed content, even catching up with a missed episode of your favourite TV show can use a large percentage of your monthly allowance, and of course demand for this type of service is increasing.

'Free' internet access with low usage allowances is a clever marketing ploy, eventually the internet will become so bandwidth driven and hungry and demand for media and streaming / skype services will become so great that most people on them will find their 'allowance' getting more and more restrictive and will need to pay and upgrade eventually. Inevitably, most consumers stay with the same provider as they don't want the hassle of moving. Good business!.

The only exception being those who just use their free connection to check email and surf to book a holiday or check ebay once a fortnight, but those are very low users who don't cost anything to 'keep' and are therefore a viable loss leader.

Coopdivi

Sorry penrhyn I didn't realise that.

So the OP has a choice between 2GB monthly limit for free or for an extra fiver get unlimited. Is that right? Well for an extra 60 quid a year I know what I'd have.

It's like having a diet exclusively of Sainsburys Basics food. You can exist on it but after a while you come to realise that there must be more to life than watery baked beans and cream cheese with bizarre additives even though you boast to everybody about how little you're actually spending.

penrhyn

OP would have to pay an extra £7.50/month for unlimited broadband from Sky, or an extra £12.50/month if they did not take Sky Talk.

http://www.sky.com/shop/broadband-talk/