BT Usage Monitor - Ridiculous charges

Reliag

I am with BT for Option1 (10GB broadband), which has been enough and our household average monthly usage has been around the 7-8GB mark.

However, I've just had a £20 charge applied to my account for 20GB over my allowance. This equates to 4x as much or over 30GB of downloads.

It looks like I'll be charged this month as well as their Usage Monitor says that so far I have used 10.86 GB...

I find this completely unbelievable - both myself and my wife are out at work during the day and unless our 4 year old son gets up to mischief during the night then I simply do not believe we are using anywhere near that amount. Neither of us download much in the way of music and certainly never stream videos aside from the odd YouTube clip...

I have asked BT to prove the usage and show me some detail but unfortunately they say they are not allowed to for data protection reasons... what a lame excuse??

I have absolutely no faith in their usage monitor but what can I do? Surely I do not simply have to trust what they are saying - over 30GB is a HUGE amount unless you're into serious file-sharing or movie streaming....

Could this be something to do with their recent policy of using consumer wireless routers to expand their Free Wifi hotspot network??

Someone help please?

giraffe69

If you are the user, account holder and downloader then I don't see why data protection applies so would query this with someone and go higher if necessary.

You could get a monitor of your own, there are free ones out there. This would give you some idea if there was a sudden jump in your use.

ktothema

Reliag wrote: »

I have asked BT to prove the usage and show me some detail but unfortunately they say they are not allowed to for data protection reasons... what a lame excuse??

other than the fact a lot of people are having the same excessive usage problem,I'd like to point out that this is complete bull:eek:

I mean who's data are they protecting? As a company they don't have the same rights as an individual and it's your data. You are entitled to it. Unless you aren't the account holder, but then they are entitled to it if they request it.

Personally I'd go back and re-request this saying they can either provide it now or you can put in a proper subject access request. Info for how to make a subject access request can be found on he website of the information commission.

macman

Is your wireless encryption secure? If not then it's perfetly feasible that someone is helping themself to your bandwidth. if you are using WEP, upgrade to WPA2 immediately-and change your password anyway.

chanz4

It will be that they don't store the data of sites visited etc

Buzby

chanz4 wrote: »

It will be that they don't store the data of sites visited etc

No, but they store the IP addresses, and retain it for 6 months - along with the date and time of access. (Now a government requirement).

MoneySavingUser

try this: http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/