BT Broadband Usage Meter Wildly Inaccurate

nickc1967

Hi,

This thread has been a real eye opener! In early April, I got an email from BT saying that I was near my 10GB limit. I was very surprised since I don't use more than 8GB a month normally. I was even more surprised when I checked the online usage monitor on 10 April to find I had apparently used 15GB! I then spent many hours talking to BT technical support: they change my encyrption code, they told me to leave the hub on but not to use the internet, they told me to turn the hub off...but still the usage went up and up, peaking at 26Gb on 24 April. BT's view by this time was that it was my problem: there had to be something on my PC that was draining Broadband; they suggested I pay £50 to get their experts to give my PC a thorough clean. And then...the usage monitor began to show that my usage for April was going DOWN! By the end of the month, it was showing that I had only used 7GB!! More calls to BT...more being put through to technical support...more denials that it was a problem their end (or simply a complete inability to understand the issue). Simply appalling.

ArtyFarty

Hi All,

My first post so be gentle with me :-)

Ok, basically I have been getting an email since I started with BT June last year each month to say that I have gone over my 7GB limit. Looking back I can see that the dates of these emails seem unusually religious, 25th or 26th of the month.

This month I have had a note saying that I have used 7gig by the 13th of the month.

I generally use my internet for general browsing and shopping, the extremely occasional iplayer and my Google play downloads for my Phone.

I also have a Sonos that can stream radio but I never use it as I just use the Radio through SKY so as to keep the bandwidth down. I still feel that I can't have hit this amount.

It's not impossible... but extremely unlikely.....

The problem is, 90% of the time I go to check BT's "online usage" tool it is unavailable, and when i do get on it it seems inaccurate as many people are saying. Not only that, when you look at this there is no way to get details on the sites that have produced significantly big spikes in usage, it's basically useless, when you can get on to it.

I'm a bit the same as some of you, this can't be a coinsidence, i get an email saying check your usage here, and it says unavailable at this time.... hiding the detail?!?

I am pretty tekkie so have, by default, been tracking my usage on my BT router, the problem is that this doesn't match my bt online usage, and, the router reboots itself when it feels like it and looses the upload/download usage.

I have been toying with the idea of getting unlimited as I too am on option 1 with a 10gig limit, I'd like to use Iplayer more, so I tried to call them....

After trying to get through to BT I ended up resorting to a chat window. The first thing I asked was when does my contact expire? There is absolutely no way of seeing when your term runs from>to finding this out in your account page that I can see, if you ask me this is pretty err rubbish I believe the phrase is.

I was told that I had signed up for an 18month contract and it expires early December. Ok I said, can I upgrade to unlimited please. No they said, not without taking out a 12 month contract......

I was frustrated but went along with it just for the hell of it.

Ok, so if I take a 12 month contract out now that would run from May to May, and my line rental which has been prepaid for the 18 month contract expires in December, so I would just pay line rental from Dec to May.

No, you have to take a new contract for 12 months including line rental. So what happens to the money I have paid up front, you have to take a 12 month contract was ther reply.

How much is it to cancel, £135.09

Arrrrrggggghhh...... (humph) :silenced:_pale_

Any advice please, I know what you are probably going to say, give them a call.... if I either stay on the phone waiting a second longer or speak to someone outside the UK who can't deal with queries like this as its not on one of their crib sheets I will go mad...

Thank you all, and thanks Martin for the site !!

Cheers

Rich

universe

I'll keep it short as people who are on here are already aware of the scam that BT are pulling. You only have to look on the net (including BT's own forums !) to see the extent of their abuse. My case is:

Installed fibre optic 8 days ago
usage for last 7 days of the month = 11.5 GB !

I have one PC, no online gaming or ipads etc etc. Wireless is secure, password changed 3 times already.

And the icing on the cake..... for the first day of this month the BT site shows I've used 5.6GB ! My pc's own usage monitor states 10% of this and the hub itself states usage as being around 500Mb.

So their own hub confirms the correct usage but their website is just plucking numbers out of thin air. I've called BT and informed them of this but they are refusing to accept the fault lies with them.

Its clearly a scam as they won't even believe their own hub that theyve provided ! I'm def going to consider escalating this with the media and watchdog as well as the authorities. They should be ashamed of themselves and can't get away with this.

My advice - if you're going to join BT - don't ! But if you still want to then go for the unlimited option not 40GB -the horror stories you read on the web are true. Hope this advice saves someone a great deal of hassle.

gterr

Starting to have the same problems.

I'm on option 1, and have already had a warning for August (just a few days in) to say we've used 7GB.
I can't believe we have. For a start, we are in a remote rural area with a low connection speed - about 1.1Mb max, frequently lower than this. How many hours would be have had to be downloading stuff at this low BB speed to have used 7GB in 4 days?? There's only two of us in the house, a laptop each. No iPlayer. One tablet rarely used.

I have had warnings in 3 of the previous 4 months. In two cases we were warned we'd used most of our allowance in the first few days of the month, yet somehow we managed to stay just under the limit by the end of the month. Neither of us do anything special in the first few days of the month with respect to downloads.

I think something is seriously broken.

BT_company_representative

Hi guys,

if you're having problems with the usage I can help. Drop me an email with your details, contact info in my profile.

Cheers

David

kwikbreaks

My granddaughter can easily use over a GB a day just on an iPad and that was just the evenings. As my holiday caravan is on 3G I had to limit the time and keep a close eye for the couple of days she was there so I had some allowance left for the rest of the month.

I've seen numerous claims that the BT meter is inaccurate but never one where there was anything like proper proof rather than "I'm sure we never used that much".

terrybdmn

BT_company_representative wrote: »

Hi guys,

if you're having problems with the usage I can help. Drop me an email with your details, contact info in my profile.

Cheers

David

I have had the usage recording problems in this forum in the last few weeks.
However, having installed think Broadband's usage meter I can say that the BT monitor is accurate, BUT, nobody can explain why the HH3 can go into a continous download mode and stick in this mode when the PC is disconnected. Only turning off the HH3 stops the download operation. So far now OK again But...
Incidentally HH3 locked onto IP 50.7.128.234, if that is a useful clue.
Hope you can use this to resolve. Incidentally PC runs Norton anti-virus as well as having microsoft's protection as well.
Cheers, terrybdmn

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

My usage so far this month is 93gb

We watch iPlayer tv and radio, with live film. And no tv tax!

gterr

Just had another warning that we may go over our limit this month, and indeed we did apparently exceed our limit last month, and paid a £5 surcharge.

I phoned BT today to see if we could upgrade ahead of another possible surcharge next month, but the best deal the rep could offer would have cost us an extra £8 per month on top of what we are paying now. Since, at worst, we would have to pay the occasional £5 surcharge for the odd month we go over, it didn't make sense to upgrade so I stayed on the same contract.

Also, my average usage is STILL about 6.5GB.

Have contacted the BT rep who posted on this forum a little while back, so we'll see what transpires.

WTFH

Do you have any friends/family who would know your BT password?
Have you got a smartphone with BT Wifi installed on it?