Excessively High Broadband Usage with BT

ChattyHarmony

I've just been searching for answers too. I was charged an additional amount of £43.50 for exceeding my broadband limit. I feel this is an excessive amount on top of my usual monthly bill which averages £42-£45 and £88.59 nearly doubles my bill for the month. I tried to telephone BT on 1/4/16 and could not get through after a 15 minute wait. I informed them by email using a link on their website advising them that I have now cancelled my Direct Debit and wish to cancel my bt phoneline and broadband. I contacted them today and have been informed they did not receive the email and they need proof. I went round in circles even trying to find an email address. I have been a loyal customer since 2012. Disgraceful way to treat their customers. I have now been told I have to pay rental etc. for May and June as according to them they did not receive my termination of contract email. What a way to get more money from customers. It is utterly disgusting.

misspalmer

hi all...im a newbie here just in the process of appealing the ombudsmans decision regarding my problems with BT. Having problems proving BT are lying ....it would seem it is easier getting blood out of a stone ..I have tried accessing my old bills itemised phone calls in order to prove BT are not telling the truth and surprise surprise I cant access them Ineed itemised bills for Nov/ Dec 2015 But was told by a BT staff member I have to ring POLICE!!!!! what a joke can anyone help or advise me please!!!!!

PeterLWilson

Hi Smiling Crow, if you think that BT are trying to pull a fast one you could always try using a free program called Glasswire. It's actually a firewall, but will also monitor your bandwidth usage for you.

Lawrence49

I am another person who does not stream anything nor watch TV on line yet who suddenly finds themselves in this position - going from an average 16GB usage per month to way over my 45GB limit. The apparent excessive usage started happening in mid-August. I have turned off my access to BT-FON. I have changed my router key. I have turned off Active-X in order to prevent pop-up videos starting automatically. Yet still today the counter available through 192.168.1.254/ shows me having used 5GB in 4 hours when I have hardly touched the Internet. It is impossible to talk to anyone in BT who can shed light on this.

Has anyone found a solution? Has anyone got BT to acknowledge that the problem is with BT, not the customer?

Mr.Boy

Here's a thought (I only read the first page)...

What if the BT service is much faster than the TalkTalk one, and your streaming services are automatically using higher quality settings and much more data?

I am fairly sure Netflix does this for instance. I've found you can turn it down to medium or even low and get quite a decent picture, at a fraction of the usage.

Mr.Boy

Another thought... have people upgraded to Windows 10 which does updates in the background without telling you?

Lawrence49

Yes, I have upgraded to Windows 10 - but I did that months ago, and well before the recent excessive rise in my apparent BB usage.

redlady57

Smiling_Crow wrote: »

Hi all - wanted to know if anyone else on here has an issue with suspiciously high Broadband usage according to the BT monitor. Right now, I really regret switching to BT from TalkTalk. Had no problems with TT at all, though sometimes streaming tv could be a bit slow on occasion. That was my only issue though.

Initially I joined with the 10 GB option, and apparently managed to use 7.5 GB in three days... so I went from the 10GB plan to the 40 GB one.. and the usage is still ridiculously high - according to BT. Tied myself into an 18 month contract in the process too I had a 40 GB usage plan with TalkTalk and never went over, didn't even need to monitor it because it was a complete non-issue. After two weeks with BT and NO CHANGE in usage habits whatsoever (except for being gone for two days so usage should be less if anything) I've apparently used over 33 GB of my allowance. Me? Suspicious? YES! Have complained via email twice, no reply. Phoned the nice customer service peoples (re tech faults with broadband) and talked in length - will need to phone billing it seems. They have twice asked if someone might be hacking into my wi-fi account... I think not... that's just too big of a coincidence - change to BT and get hacked the same day.

I KNOW this is a BT issue, the ONLY thing that has changed is that I've joined them and am using their hub... on their forums there are numerous complaints from people experiencing the same excessively (suspiciously) high usage according to BT.

I'm hoping this will either be finally resolved, or I can break the contract on the grounds of utterly unsatisfactory and faulty service. If anyone else had this problem, I'd be very interested to hear about it, and how/if the issue was resolved.

Also, if anyone has any tips on how to deal with an unhelpful corporate giant - especially legal ways to leave them, I'd be jolly grateful.
Thanks!

I have the same problem I got an email telling me I was near my 45gb limit, when I've used my Now TV to stream which is rare I could understand but I never go over 25gb.
I looked at 'mybt' app and my normal usage was 250mb per day up until the end of April then it increased to between 1200mb and 1800mb per day, big difference. As with you my habits haven't changed, laptop surfing and the soaps, no streaming, downloading or using catch-up. When did they do the major update to the youview boxes?
I spent over 2 hours trying to speak to a lady who kept telling me it was my youview box that was using my broadband and I kept telling her that normal use of the box does not use my allowance. She tried to put me through to another team to change my package to unlimited - got cut off!
I did change to a 24 mth unlimited packagebut this is at a cost to me as I know I would end up paying £1.80 per gb over my limit if I didn't. I was perfectly happy with my 12mth 45gb. I really feel I have been pressured into this! I'll be complaining about this one when BT admit they are at fault.
I'm expecting an email next about the fair usage policy they have.
I decided to have an online chat, this lady decided to ring me. She got me to disconnect the youview box for 24 hrs which I did. She rang me the following day and my use was 100mb proving it was the box that is using my broadband.
I wrote a complaint yesterday and a member of the complaints team rang me today but couldn't answer my question, bless him he tried to put me through to the faults team but lo and behold I got cut-off.
I've complained again so I will see what tomorrow brings, more cut-offs no doubt!!

Lawrence49

I had a similar problem for one month last year. I think that it was due to my moving to Windows 10 and using Microsoft Edge instead of IE7, which automatically played the videos in many of the advertisements that appear on many websites. This can eat up bandwidth. Be sure to disable "Flash" and use an Ad blocker to minimise unwanted usage. I did this, and the problem went away. Alternatively, stick with using IE7.

[Deleted User]

Lawrence49 wrote: »

I had a similar problem for one month last year. I think that it was due to my moving to Windows 10 and using Microsoft Edge instead of IE7, which automatically played the videos in many of the advertisements that appear on many websites. This can eat up bandwidth. Be sure to disable "Flash" and use an Ad blocker to minimise unwanted usage. I did this, and the problem went away. Alternatively, stick with using IE7.

Hopefully you mean IE11