Challenging excess broadband usage charges from BT

bocaboca

Hi, I need some help understanding and challenging my bill for BtBroadband.
I am on Option 1 which has a 10Gig limit; this month BT allege that I have used over 20.
I have challenged this but they tell me that they cannot provide any data other than the total monthly usage; does anyone know if they do actually have more data than this? For example, it would be very useful to have a daily or , even better, hourly graph.
It doesn’t seem right to me that they can make a charge and not be able to prove my usage!

On the assumption that BT are correct, how can I check/reduce my usage?
I have a PC, tablet and Kindle.
• I do not download movies or music.
• I don’t use catch-up TV or stream movies.
• I do not store info in the cloud.
I have installed a broadband usage monitor on the PC and it shows about 25Mbyte per day.
My usage of the tablet is mainly Facebook ( again with no videos)
My usage of the kindle is email plus somne book downloads.

Any ideas gratefully received.

chanz4

whats some book downloads

bocaboca

just checked and there is 50Mbyte of books on the Kindle

chunkychocky

Do any of your devices automatically download software updates or anti-virus updates?

chunkychocky

Do you have wi-fi, and is this properly password protected?

bocaboca

Software or anti-virus updates? Yes, I have auto update on windows and anti-virus; would these updates show up in the network monitor traffic?
Wi-fi:- all 3 devices are on the wi-fi with WPA2 security.

chunkychocky

I would expect that the updates would show up in the monitor, but it could be very heavily loaded on one day, so if you only started monitoring traffic after the excessive usage then you may not know about a major update that happened prior to this. We've had some massive updates recently that are several Gb each.

Can you see if anyone else has accessed your wifi?

securityguy

It does seem a shame that ISPs can't provide more data. Unfortunately, the information you really need is down at the individual home device level, which can only really be obtained within your network. One might think that having per-connected-device statistics on the router would be in everyone's interest, but I'm not aware of a router that offers that. Even if you use brute force and monitor your network with something like cacti, it's actually quite tricky to figure out which machines are making heavy use of the Internet and when. Even if you have, say, a managed ethernet switch and can individually analyse each port, distinguishing between machines talking amongst themselves (Time Machine, say, for Apple users, or TVs talking to media servers) and machines talking to the Internet isn't straightforward.

bocaboca

chunkychocky wrote: »

Can you see if anyone else has accessed your wifi?

I've been checking which machines have accessed it and have not seen anything unusual.

Bradfield

I am with BT; on the same plan as you and like you have low internet usage. Do you check your usage on the BT usage monitor?

I have checked mine and it seems about right but I have read scare stories about BT claiming users are massively exceeding their data plans.

If it is the first month it happened (allegedly) then they are supposed to waive the excess charge and just give a warning.

Other BT customers are allowed to access your wifi and it does not count against your data allowance.

After reading your post I went into my BT homepage and did a screen capture of my usage monitor using PaintShopPro.

I intend to do this regularly now and keep records. That way I can keep track of my usage and hopefully spot anything amiss pretty quickly. The screen capture has the date and time as well as the data usage so could be used in any debate with BT.

It is an inconvenience but the only way I can think of to monitor the situation.

If you access the page where the usage monitor is you will find some other useful information pertaining to data usage and allowances.

Good luck. Let us know how you get on. Seems like it could happen to any of us.

bocaboca

Bradfield wrote: »

After reading your post I went into my BT homepage and did a screen capture of my usage monitor using PaintShopPro.
.

Good idea! It could be useful evidence. I'll try to likewise