Numpty question about Broadband usage

TomsMom

J_B wrote: »

I guess, like me, you are with plusnet coz the same thing happens here whenever the 'children' come back home.

I just shrug my shoulders as if I wanted to swap to unlimited, they would want £15 every month, whereas now they only want £15 every so often!!

Have you asked your ISP about the charges for higher usage?
I'm stuck with what I have as we are not LLU here.
My F-I-L swapped from 10GB (?) for a tenner to unlimited for around six quid :cool:

Yes, it is Plusnet :T. I've got 10GB with evening and weekend calls included for £8.66 per month, unfortunately not quite such a good deal as my previous contract with them but I got it fixed for two years. I'm also not LLU, can only get ADSL and also a Market 1 area so very few providers with BT Wholesale being the sole provider of broadband services so other companies having to purchase off BT. Plusnet were offering the best deal, the reviews for them were good and I've been very happy with their service, no problems up to now.

I didn't want unlimited, there's no point in me paying extra for it as it seems as though I don't normally use more than 5GB per month, it was just this one occasion when GS came, weather was foul so he couldn't go out and he spent the day watching NetFlix.

We've recently had one of those new boxes installed a little way from my house, ready for fibre optic. I *think* you don't have to have fibre optic if you don't want it (I'll need to look into that a bit more at some point), I personally don't have a need for anything more sophisticated than what I have now so in true MSE style I don't have a desire to spend any extra money on something I don't need .

agrinnall

I've just switched from BT 10GB to Plusnet Unlimited, for me it was cheaper to get the Unlimited package as they were offering an introductory 12 month discount that made the cost less for the first year than their 10GB package, and I will hopefully move house some time in the next year anyway. That probably wouldn't be available to you as an existing customer though.

azzabazza

We went unlimited broadband earlier this year because we found our grandchildren bumped up the usage when they visit. Also I got a tablet and a new phone which uses up the gbs! We upgraded with PlusNet paying £14.50 per month for unlimited BBand and unlimited calls. We did pay a year's line rental up front. Cheaper than BT and excellent service.

TomsMom

agrinnall wrote: »

I've just switched from BT 10GB to Plusnet Unlimited, for me it was cheaper to get the Unlimited package as they were offering an introductory 12 month discount that made the cost less for the first year than their 10GB package, and I will hopefully move house some time in the next year anyway. That probably wouldn't be available to you as an existing customer though.

No. When I first went with them as a new customer I had a really cracking deal - £3.24 for the first 6 months then £6.50 for the remainder of the year. On renewal I really haggled, they offered me a one year contract at more than the £6.50 and a two year contract at a bit more still and I figured that if I took out a one year contract it would go up again to probably more than what they were offering me to fix for 2 years so I plumped for that.

azzabazza wrote: »

We went unlimited broadband earlier this year because we found our grandchildren bumped up the usage when they visit. Also I got a tablet and a new phone which uses up the gbs! We upgraded with PlusNet paying £14.50 per month for unlimited BBand and unlimited calls. We did pay a year's line rental up front. Cheaper than BT and excellent service.

This grandchild only comes occasionally as they live so far away so it really was a one-off. I did the one year in advance line rental too and I do my daytime calls through 18185 which averages roughly £2.50 every two months so cheap as chips really and probably not worth paying extra for unlimited calls. I don't have a clever mobile phone (I rarely use the one I've got) nor anything else to eat up my usage, and three other grandchildren live round the corner and have their iPads, Tablets, and whatever else round there.

tafelmoneysaver

TomsMom wrote: »

I
He spent most of one day watching NetFlix

As others have pointed out this is the root cause of your issue. I have my Netflix account to stream in the highest quality available and can easily rack up usage of >60GB per month.

Depending on the make and model of your router (the box with the blinking lights sitting between your PC and the telephone socket) you might be able to configure your router to limit the iPad to a maximum daily or monthly usage limit.

But having a conversation with the lad is probably the easiest option.

J_B

tafelmoneysaver wrote: »

But having a conversation with the lad is probably the easiest option.

I don't have grandkids (yet) but for the sake of a fiver a month whenever they occasionally visit, it's probably not even worth mentioning ..... if you want them to come again

prowla

Movies, downloads, and software updates - they'll use up your allowance.

You can turn off automated updates in Windows, otherwise it will happily do it in the background, and some can be large.

If you think that a DVD holds 4 GB of data, then watching a movie would soon help eat up your allowance.

Other things include music (up to 100 MB/album), videos (youtube, newsreels, etc.), new software installs.