MSE News: BT to refund customers after Fon wi-fi blunder

peterwot

<Customers with unlimited broadband won't have been affected>

Numerous complaints about unexplained increases in usage stretch back four years on this and other forums. Perhaps customers have upgraded on basis of readings from BT which now appear to be inaccurate?

setay

useage monitor says I used 6mb whilst I was on holiday with all devices turned off!

vofs007

Iain_L wrote: »

Sorry, my post was correct already, would you like to see the transcript of my call with CS representatives from BT. The usage monitor tells you what they say you have used for that month - if you speak to customer service they can give you a daily breakdown for the previous 7 days, but say then that they don't have access to the figures from any time further back from that.

Your post is based on incorrect information from BT CS reps.
They do have access to further information as the usage monitor they have access to is different to that available to most customers. The reps you talked to may be unaware of this.

Iain_L wrote: »

If yours shows daily usage for the month, and also monthly usage for the last 12 months you must have a different monitor to me. I have just accessed mine through My BT and it doesn't give the information that your apparently does.
Iain

I suspect that we have the same monitor but you do not know how to get the additional information.

Iain_L wrote: »

The fundamental problem is that you have to trust what the BT representative says, and as they are so keen on pushing Unlimited on everyone, I'm afraid my experience with their CS reps is that they are working for an organisation that cannot be trusted in this regard, as they evidently cannot supply evidence of what has been used.

You do not have to trust what the BT rep says. You can check what the usage monitor indicates against the data recorded by your Home Hub. This is not as easy as it should be but if more customers did this problems such as the BT Fon issue would have been identified more quickly.

Iain_L

vofs007 wrote: »

Your post is based on incorrect information from BT CS reps.
They do have access to further information as the usage monitor they have access to is different to that available to most customers. The reps you talked to may be unaware of this.



I suspect that we have the same monitor but you do not know how to get the additional information.




You do not have to trust what the BT rep says. You can check what the usage monitor indicates against the data recorded by your Home Hub. This is not as easy as it should be but if more customers did this problems such as the BT Fon issue would have been identified more quickly.

As I stated that I was unhappy with the original response and insisted on a response from one of the CS managers, obviously the manager was unaware of it as well.

Rather than telling me I obviously don't know how to use the monitor, can you actually help by providing a screen shot of your monitor and instructions on how to use it to get the information I want to see.

As far as BT are concerned, what they say goes. The quote I received was "If the usage monitor says you used it, you must have done" They were not interested in listening to anything else.

Data recorded against your Home Hub is not something you should be having to do; the company have the capability to record your daily usage, and saying "We can only see the last 7 days" is unacceptable.

Pincher

This is the Usage Monitor I see.


http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/32952/c/346


About two days behind actual usage.
No daily usage history.
No monthly history.
Just your average monthly usage.


It's useless. If it gets to 35GB near the end of the month, I cut down, so I don't go over the 40GB limit. It resets on the 2nd of each month, and I never know how much they think I actually used that month, just zero and start again.


I think a fairer way of doing it is to roll over the leftover each month, but not accumulatively. So if I used 28GB in July, I get 40+12=52GB in August. The 12GB is what I PAID FOR and didn't use. The 12GB does not get carried over into September. If I use 38GB in August, only 2GB get rolled over,
but if I used 49GB in August, I don't get charged for going over.

vofs007

Iain_L wrote: »

Rather than telling me I obviously don't know how to use the monitor, can you actually help by providing a screen shot of your monitor and instructions on how to use it to get the information I want to see.

As requested below are screenshots of usage in January 2014. Some formatting has been lost in capturing the images and I have removed personal information.
Click on the images for a bigger version. (apologies for the extra images that pay for the free image hosting).

I suggest you ask BT for instructions on how to get this data for your account.
Page 1.

Page 2.

Iain_L

vofs007 wrote: »

As requested below are screenshots of usage in January 2014. Some formatting has been lost in capturing the images and I have removed personal information.
Click on the images for a bigger version. (apologies for the extra images that pay for the free image hosting).

I suggest you ask BT for instructions on how to get this data for your account.

Why can't you tell me? Can you at least give me the URL of your monitor? It may help others as well, not just me.

Iain

vofs007

Iain_L wrote: »

Why can't you tell me? Can you at least give me the URL of your monitor? It may help others as well, not just me.

Iain

The URL of the monitor is given at the bottom of the screen shots above.

If you put this into your browser it will ask you to login using your BT ID.

If you have multiple accounts you will then need to select the one with your broadband account.

This should then take you directly to the usage monitor.

It is likely that you will not get the information that I have displayed so you will then need to contact BT to ask why not and get them to fix it. You will probably find that 1st line and 2nd line support are unable to help so escalate until you reach a level that can.

vofs007

peterwot wrote: »

<Customers with unlimited broadband won't have been affected>

Numerous complaints about unexplained increases in usage stretch back four years on this and other forums. Perhaps customers have upgraded on basis of readings from BT which now appear to be inaccurate?

This is the case and the issue has been reported to OFCOM who claim to be investigating but will not accept evidence in support but prefer to do the investigating themselves.

Note that the usage monitor in general is accurate and most of the complaints are not valid but due to users not having proper tools to monitor their usage. Plusnet, a subsidiary of BT, has a far more sophisticated user monitor but a request to BT to implement this in the ideas section of the BT Community Forum has met with little support.

Iain_L

vofs007 wrote: »

The URL of the monitor is given at the bottom of the screen shots above.

If you put this into your browser it will ask you to login using your BT ID.

If you have multiple accounts you will then need to select the one with your broadband account.

This should then take you directly to the usage monitor.

It is likely that you will not get the information that I have displayed so you will then need to contact BT to ask why not and get them to fix it. You will probably find that 1st line and 2nd line support are unable to help so escalate until you reach a level that can.

Thank you for that additional information. I had tried the URL from the bottom of your image, but simply got taken to my normal simple BB monitor.