Please help: Supanet and over-use charges

tomowen5

Dear all,

I have just signed up to this forum, as I am in a bit of a pickle my broadband provider, Supanet, which I have already seen is no stranger to this forum.

I have been a loyal customer of Supanet for several years, and have received a fairly decent level of service, and although they have not been totally competitive on price, they have been reasonably trouble-free.

I received a telephone call this morning from a Supanet customer advisor, at first asking me if I was happy with the service received thus far. She then proceeded to tell me that I have been exceeding the fair use policy implemented by Supanet, and that from this past month, I will now be charged for my usage over and above the prescribed bandwidth of 30Gb per month.

I explained that a couple of years ago, I received occasional e-mails from Supanet if I had exceeded the 30Gb limit, and that a speed regulator would be imposed on my service. I adhered to this, and continued to monitor my usage. However, these e-mails stopped and I had never received any correspondence regarding this issue in the last 2 years or so.

This morning's phone call was the first I had heard about their 'new' policy where they would start to impose charges, and an option was presented to me where I could adopt a new 50Gb limit service, for an extra £5 a month, bring my monthly fee upto £27.99. If I did not sign up to this upgrade, then I was told that I would face a charge of around £70 for last months overuse. Dazzled by this amount, I verbally agreed to this upgrade, with a proviso that I could cancel within 7 days if I wanted to.

Thinking about this throughout the day, I felt this new level of service was not competitive and decided to shop around, and wanted to go with a different provider, providing a comprehensive package of calls and broadband. Phoning Supanet back to get the Migration Authorisation Code (MAC), I was told that in order to get the MAC code, I would have to pay the overuse fee for the past 12 months of activity, coming to a total of £564!!

This contact today is the first I have heard of a change in their terms and conditions, and I believe they have not informed me of any overuse, so they can now use this against me to cajole me into upgrading and sticking with them for a further 18 months, without any reasonable way of opting out. I have not been informed to date that any overuse would incur such a fee, and have not received any correspondence that any new terms & conditions would be in place.

Every time I upgraded my package, I never received written confirmation, or new terms and conditions, which I now regret I didn't chase up, but I feel that they have built up this sum of charges to directly blackmail me into a new 18 month contract.

Had I known such charges were being introduced, I would have ensured to monitor my activity accordingly, and I feel that they have secretly built this up as a way to hold my custom to ransom.

I would be grateful if anyone could offer advice on this situation, as I feel they have bullied me into a new contract.

I will be visiting my local Citizens Advice Bureau in the morning to see where I stand legally on this, and will phone Consumers Direct as well before contacting Supanet again, but if anyone could offer me any guidance or thoughts on my legal position, then that would be very much appreciated.

Many thanks,

Tom.

leolion2177

Hi
I came across this today while trying to get my mac code for supanet.

Did you get any further.

Regards


Leo

tomowen5

Dear all,

Just seen the posts further to my own, and can provide an update of my situation with Supanet.

I sought legal advice from Citizens Advice Bureau, who were incredible helpful. They went through different parts of the law with me, but they insisted that I start getting everything in writing. I managed to collate a lot of correspondence, highlighting the way I was establishing my case, and also showing how dilitary and unprofessional supanet were.

Each time I phoned Supanet, they were very aggressive and rude in their manner, always reminding me of the charges that I had unknowingly accrued. Each time I argued that such charges were not in the original T&Cs I signed up to, they insisted they were, reflected only in the T&Cs that were currently available on the website. However, I found copied online of the original T&Cs I signed up to - you can search for supanet.com on the webarchive.org website, and indeed these original T&Cs proved me right, having no mention of over-use charges on an "unlimited" broadband package.

I also found e-mail correspondence from a couple of years ago regarding overuse, but the limit was stated as 30Gb, not the 15Gb limit they were using against me. I managed to e-mail and fax printouts of this correspondence to them, to which I never received an acknowledgement of the contradiction.

With building my case up, and amassing a great record of correspondence, Supanet eventually gave in. Every subsequent phone call was met with a very sharp response, that a manager would get in touch with me. Eventually a manager came back to me, and although he was short of apologising for all the hassle, he tried to tempt me with an "exclusive manager's deal" of a 100Gb monthly limit, with no new contract, and keeping my monthly payment at the £22.99 I had been paying to date.

I explained to him that although he was being courteous *now*, I had been treated with absolute disregard, and still wished to leave. As they now could see me piecing together a case against them, they dropped all the charges - in fact, he didn't even want to acknowledge the charges existed. He simply stated that the staff I had spoken to thus far were not aware of my loyalty as a customer.

This appears to be classic "carrot and stick" treatment. Get the underlings on the phone to try and cajole the customer into staying, with threats of over-use charges, and once you have established a case and backed them into a corner, they then come across all nice and customer-friendly.

I would advise therefore, to get as much info documented and recorded as possible, always ask to speak to a manager and not just the call-centre staff, and find any documentation that supports your case. The T&Cs I found on webarchive.org were incredibly useful, and was the ace up my sleeve, but I got to the point where I didn't even need to send these across to Supanet.

It is shameful that this is the extent to which they try and get their existing and loyal customer base to sign to new contracts, and it has certainly been a lesson for me, to retain all documents, records and T&Cs to prevent being effectively blackmailed again. The added fact that I was paying via pre-authorised debit card payments increased my worry as these cannot be cancelled as direct debits can - you have to rely on the good nature of the payee to not take the payment, and fortunately Supanet has not taken any further payment from my account.

This has simply been a case of calling their bluff, of sticking to your guns, knowing what you know to be correct, and being as dilligent as you possibly can.

As my case has been resolved satisfactorily, I could not take it to Ofcom (who were not very helpful in the first instance) nor could I take it to the Ombudsmen. They can't get away with doing this, and I fully intend to take my case to watchdog and will write to computer magazines to highlight the sharp practice Supanet are pursuing.

As you can prove that the original T&Cs have changed (which seems to coincide with a change of Supanet's ownership), then this shows that your contract with them has changed, without notification of a change in the T&Cs. This is sufficient to make your contract null and void, and I am sure that if all of Supanet's customers knew this, then they'd have a lot of people wishing to cancel, regardless of any contractual obligations.

I hope this advice helps, and you get sorted. Just stick to your guns with it, and don't take any !!!!!! off them!

Cheers,

Tom.

thebigpea

Hi Tom,
It was very interesting reading your post concerning your service from supanet. I have just been doing some research on the internet as I have encountered almost an identical problem as you. I have also been with supanet for 8 years (broadband 512). In July I received a letter stating over usage and was being charged a fee of £209.00. I called them immediately to queerie this charge. They agreed to waiver £100 if I was to sign up to a new 18 month contract (verbal) which allowed 100gb per month. I agreed as I had no idea they had the right to charge for over usage and then read their new T & C on their site which clarified these changes. I felt bullied as you did into this new agreement. Last week my internet was switched off by supanet and when I called them to find out why had been informed I now have an outstanding bill amounting to £417.00. As you can imagine this news was shocking. They state that I have been using on average 26gb per day, which to me is impossible as I do no downloading of any files of any big sizes. Today, they are now asking for £714.00 (which is both a bill to terminate my contract and the outstanding over usage they have issued me with). If you have any advice or possible ideas I would very much appreciate any help with this. I have looked up the site 'webarchive.org' you state in your post but can find no information from supanet and their T&C's.
Many thanks in advance
Ben

macman

thebigpea wrote: »

Hi Tom,
It was very interesting reading your post concerning your service from supanet. I have just been doing some research on the internet as I have encountered almost an identical problem as you. I have also been with supanet for 8 years (broadband 512). In July I received a letter stating over usage and was being charged a fee of £209.00. I called them immediately to queerie this charge. They agreed to waiver £100 if I was to sign up to a new 18 month contract (verbal) which allowed 100gb per month. I agreed as I had no idea they had the right to charge for over usage and then read their new T & C on their site which clarified these changes. I felt bullied as you did into this new agreement. Last week my internet was switched off by supanet and when I called them to find out why had been informed I now have an outstanding bill amounting to £417.00. As you can imagine this news was shocking. They state that I have been using on average 26gb per day, which to me is impossible as I do no downloading of any files of any big sizes. Today, they are now asking for £714.00 (which is both a bill to terminate my contract and the outstanding over usage they have issued me with). If you have any advice or possible ideas I would very much appreciate any help with this. I have looked up the site 'webarchive.org' you state in your post but can find no information from supanet and their T&C's.
Many thanks in advance
Ben

26GB per day!? I suggest you check that your wireless connection is secured, as it appears that someone else is hammering your bandwidth-either that or Supanet have got it badly wrong.
If you are using WEP encryption, change it immediately to WPA. WEP is not secure.
I suggest that you install Netmeter or similar and monitor your own usage.

bod1467

Even the router stats themselves should show the real usage (assuming the router doesn't reboot or drop the connection). 26GB per day would be noticed!

brewerdave

thebigpea wrote: »

They state that I have been using on average 26gb per day, which to me is impossible as I do no downloading of any files of any big sizes.

You haven't been watching live TV thru your connection have you?
SkyGo or BBC iPlayer can use over 1GB/hr!

As previously stated, check that your wireless connection is either turned off or secured to the highest level your devices will support.Could be that someone is piggybacking on your network.

colingar

I have had exactly the same problem with sudden overusage charges. I upgraded to a 50GB cap,which was only an extra £1, and thought it would have comfortably catered for my usage. So after carelessly ignoring my Supanet account usage and bank statements for a couple of months, found that I was going well over my new cap and incurring overusage charges. Me being a soft touch, then upgraded again to a 100GB cap package,but have installed a meter to keep a close eye on my usage.

It appears that these bigger packages must include uploads in the usage allowance. I am waiting for a reply from Supanet to confirm this. I have always had good service,as far as reliability and speed of connection goes,but Supanet's information,concerning terms and conditions of broadband packages,leaves a lot to be desired.

Can anyone confirm that these packages include upload usage. It's the weekend and Supanet aren't open for contact till Monday.

bod1467

It depends. Some ISPs do include upload; others don't. Can't say what stance Supanet take, but I'd not be surprised if they do include uploads.

I'm in the fortunate position of not needing to care about usage, being as I am with BE who have a truly unlimited service. (Yes, there is a FUP, but NOBODY has ever been pulled up on it for usage reasons - at least not in the 3+ years I've been with them. The only warnings have been to people who used their connections for sending SPAM emails).