Excessively High Broadband Usage with BT

JJ_Egan

westy03 wrote: »

The same has happened to my mohers connection but I pay the bill..usual monthly usage was around 8gb usage and then last month it nearly tripled to over 22gb.i kind of thought it was a one off.but have started monitoring and this month so far in an 11 day period she has used she has apparantly used over 11gb already this just isnt possible.anyone had any useful help from bt.

Why is it not possible ??
WiFi on and left unsecured would make it possible as would other factors .
Are you monitoring the router or just the PC ??

barnetto30

BT_company_representative wrote: »

Hi viviantidbury,

I???ll be happy to take a look at this for you. Drop me an email with the details. You???ll get the contact details in my profile.

Cheers

David

Having exactly the same issues with BT Usage having sky rocketed unexpectedly - can I also get our usage checked please?

Feelrippedoff

Hi ... Having started having problems and found this thread I thought I would recount our experience of switching to Infinity. Our previous broadband speed was about 2Mb at best and with a following breeze. On 8 Dec I switched to Infinity, the package with 20Gb of use per month, Hub arrived 17 Dec and was fitted on 19th by an engineer at 20.45 in the evening. He was here for about 20 minutes, changed a face plate on the phone socket, unpacked the BT5 hub, connected it up (2 PCs) and left. No new cable laid. I now believe he should have tested our system and showed us how it worked. He did not but I think we managed on our own.
A speed test showed c. 20Mb/s so we expected great things.
Oh dear: not to be. Since then our internet connections have been intermittent and slow, frequently informing us that 'Cannot connect to Internet' then connecting a short time later. Very disappointing. Then today we had a e mail from BT warning us that we were about to exceed our monthly broadband allowance. So we investigated further. Calls to BT (more later see below) got us the information that on Xmas day we used over a Gb. Interesting as we do not download films or songs or upload photos and the 25th. was spent with the family at lunch and chatting. A few e mails only with only one document download of about 8Mb.
My son, an IT guru, contacted BT via on-line email chat to try to sort things out. To no avail, although the case is still open. He was continually told that BT could see that our hub was working even though the connection was lost a few times during the 'conversation' exchanges. Several checks on our equipment were suggested and showed nothing amiss. The point made to BT that these problems, affecting both our PCs, only started when we started using the BT Hub5 seemed lost on the BT representative who made no comment on the fact that other people have had similar problems.
Regarding broadband useage: this shows a considerable daily rise starting on the 19th, the date we were connected. Coincidence? I think not but getting BT to accept the fact seems impossible. Seems there maybe responsible people but no-one is accountable and no-one takes this issue seriously anyway. Hence my username ......
We think we had better service with our old broadband.

Kind regards

Feeling even more ripped off

littleboo

How are your PC's connecting to the Hub ? You need to be connecting via ethernet to eliminate wireless as the cause of the disconnections.

pieman_71

Hi

I too have been suffering from the same usage issues including 18Gb of usage on a day when no one was in the house (and no one has our password). I've installed usage trackers on our devices to make sure we're not using it excessively and according to them we should be at around 2Gb for the month but BT has us at 34GB! I found this post and contacted the BT rep who organised an engineer to come round.

The BT engineer round has discovered that our hub is broadcasting as a hotspot - a default setting that he didn't know how to turn off and he said would be the cause. I can't find a setting for it anywhere so waiting to hear back from BT as to how to do this.

An internet search suggests this is true and customers have to opt out, but in theory any usage on this shouldn't count towards any broadband allowance. However, a quick search on the net turned up numerous threads on the BT community page where there is a track record of customers being wrongly charged for .Fon usage, one such example as follows:

https://community.bt.com/t5/Bills-Packages/Broadband-Usage-Massive-Surge/td-p/1296353/page/11

I hope this is of help to others in discovering where their usage has suddenly come from.

Gordon_Hose

If you opt out of FON you can't use the FON hotspots yourself. It's a trade off.

pieman_71

Understood, but it may stop charges like the £56 one I had in December for excess data usage.

BT claim we used over 80Gb but the thinkbroadband monitor I have installed on our laptops puts it at nearer 3Gb (well within our 20Gb allowance). The hub doesn't show any unknown devices have connected to it so I'm struggling to find another explanation.

shoperholicnot

When I called BT to get my MAC they told me I am a high user and the most I have used in a month is 220gb! I have NEVER used that much, I would say the most ever is about 100gb and that was a rarity.

Kelvinsmith

Hi, I have several questions about my broadband usage but cannot see your contact details!

Seanto

Has anyone got to the bottom of this, y mum's friend has asked me how she is used 161gb in the last month.. she is a technophobe with 2 children under 10 that use a tablet for a few hours at the weekend, she was never warned with her previous provider about usage and now bt simply double and then some her bill every month .. so much so that she is scared to watch too much tv because of the use! As said she is a technophobe. How a company operates like this is criminal, she asked how to cap or view usage and was told to check online and when she explained she isn't tech savvy they customer care said they would send her an email to help her!!! I recently joined bt and have my own problems .. countless problems and 3 refunds later and still having my own gremlins but at least I haven't been warned about my usage as was unlimited however when I was thinking of leaving them they informed me I was using 70gb a month- strangely given in was abroad for 3 weeks of that month ... again couldn't explain my usage but made me wary of going to a lower package than unlimited