Personal Fair Usage - EE 4G LTE Essentials Unlimited - Contract Issues

[Deleted User]

user1977 said:

Grumpy_chap said:

On-the-coast said:

600 GB - probably adequate for a family of 4 - but easy to exceed with several HD tv streams. And intermittent PC or iCloud backup / download could easily wipe that out during occasional months. 

12 devices is problematic. In my family (adult children still just at home) all of us have a pc, a tablet and a phone.  That’s 12 devices right away.  In reality there are at least 20 devices regularly connected to my mesh WiFi. 

Just to be clear, though, is the EE plan that the OP refers to a mobile plan or a land line / fibre plan?

I read it as a mobile plan in which case, tethering 12 or more devices is probably a lot.

Yes, 4G in the subject line. And while it's obviously possible to have 12+ devices in a house (or rack up 600GB in a month), I would expect that's still well above the average. It doesn't feel unreasonable as a limit.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. The bottom line here is that if one connects a router to the EE 4G LTE network then one is very likely to be in breach of the terms of service. It creates a dichotomy, routers must connect to fibre broadband and mobile devices to 4G LTE, there is no other choice as far as EE is concerned. Fibre is not available everywhere so rural customers are being penalised for using affordable 4G LTE broadband.

voluted

[Deleted User] said:

user1977 said:

Given you're posting here, I presume you're asking whether this breaches any consumer rights? I don't think it does, if the limits are stated upfront. The limits don't need to extend to every conceivable consumer scenario.

GenX thanks for taking the time to reply and you are of course right in what you say however, there are some issues with the wording of the terms. They say "or to move you to a business plan", this is a unilateral declaration that EE  can do this. The reality, and I have this from a reliable source, is that this is not the case. On application to EE Business, the process is called Change of Ownership, they will send a form to be completed. The form requires:

Proof of business (which shows the Business Name, or ‘Trading As’, or that it’s for a business account):

• Bank statement / credit card statement or letter from bank (dated within the last 3 months)
• Company Utility Bill
• Cheque Book

Plus a covering letter.

Those are the requirements if you sign up to an EE business account, there's no reason why EE would hamstring themselves with the same restriction if someone is abusing the FUP.

Another issue arises when they say " If you regularly tether 12 or more devices, we will consider this non-personal use and have the right to move you to a more suitable plan." The reality is there are no such plans that accomodate 12+ connected devices. On both counts there is room for better and clearer wording within the Terms.

With customers having nowere to go, EE can contractually do whatever they like and have the right to apply traffic management controls to deprioritise ones mobile traffic during busy periods. Indeed, if one researches this on the likes of forums like EE Community, there is a great deal of dissatisfaction on the part of customers about the sudden onset of persistent low speeds and EE staff are at a loss to explain why. Research shows that EE are unlikely to disconnect instead they will slow speeds to less than 10Mbps.

There doesn't need to be a plan that accommodates 12+ users just because there are plans that restrict you to less than 12 users. If you need a service that supports 12+ users, don't use EE. Seems fairly simple.

A more likely reason for poor or slow connections is that automation operating within BT or EE infrastructure is automatically applying traffic management because the terms of service have been breached as a result of the MAC address count.

FYI they can't see the MAC addresses of the devices unless you were using some sort of EE-supplied router that they essentially had a backdoor into (unlikely when we're talking about mobile data plans.) That's not how MAC addresses work.

user1977

[Deleted User] said:

user1977 said:

Given you're posting here, I presume you're asking whether this breaches any consumer rights? I don't think it does, if the limits are stated upfront. The limits don't need to extend to every conceivable consumer scenario.

GenX thanks for taking the time to reply and you are of course right in what you say however, there are some issues with the wording of the terms. They say "or to move you to a business plan", this is a unilateral declaration that EE  can do this. The reality, and I have this from a reliable source, is that this is not the case. 

Ok, but there's nothing unlawful about the statement. They could equally say "we will terminate your contract" and not mention anything about alternative tariffs.

You may have more of a point about them throttling the bandwidth arbitrarily.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

What they are saying is the service is unlimited but they then try to limit it! 

I have "unlimited" with EE with the same clause about 600GB in the terms, they recently sent me a letter to say my contract was coming to an end but don't worry as everything carries on as normal, at the end of the letter it says "data: 9999 GB".

Unlimited with restrictions shouldn't be sold as unlimited IMHO, switching you to a business tariff (if you aren't one) is possibly an unfair term, the reduction in speed could possibly be an unfair term as well as it's varying the service sold and forcing the consumer to accepted reduced benefits under the contract, either that or we are in CCRs territory.   

PHK

Remember that the plan the OP is talking about is their Essentials plan designed for one person to use with speed limited to 10Mbps. It’s the cheapest unlimited plan. 

I think the terms and conditions are reasonable and fair.

voluted

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

What they are saying is the service is unlimited but they then try to limit it! 

I have "unlimited" with EE with the same clause about 600GB in the terms, they recently sent me a letter to say my contract was coming to an end but don't worry as everything carries on as normal, at the end of the letter it says "data: 9999 GB".

Unlimited with restrictions shouldn't be sold as unlimited IMHO, switching you to a business tariff (if you aren't one) is possibly an unfair term, the reduction in speed could possibly be an unfair term as well as it's varying the service sold and forcing the consumer to accepted reduced benefits under the contract, either than or we are in CCRs territory.   

Unfortunately anyone who realistically stood any chance of getting the use of the term "unlimited" stopped believed it was perfectly acceptable to use "Unlimited" as long as it was asterisked with *Fair Use Policy applies. That would be both the ASA and Ofcom.

For what it's worth, I agree with you. "Unlimited" has a very clear definition that is "not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity, or extent." By introducing throttling when you get to a particular amount of data then it clearly IS restricted. The argument that technically they're not applying a strict limit on the data, but rather the speed, therefore there is no hard limit on the data allowance is ridiculous IMO. This has been going on for the best part of two decades though now, so I don't see it changing anytime soon.

400ixl

[Deleted User] said:

Thanks for taking the time to reply. The bottom line here is that if one connects a router to the EE 4G LTE network then one is very likely to be in breach of the terms of service. It creates a dichotomy, routers must connect to fibre broadband and mobile devices to 4G LTE, there is no other choice as far as EE is concerned. Fibre is not available everywhere so rural customers are being penalised for using affordable 4G LTE broadband.

You are complaining that they have a device limit for tethering on a mobile phone contract ( and their basic essentials one at that), saying it is not fair, yet you are planning to use it for home broadband in a router.

Either buy a 4G/5G home broadband service from EE (or other  such as Three) or accept the terms of their mobile plans.

If you put a wifi router behind the 4G EE router and use NATing then the 4G router will be the other side of the WAN connection for the devices and the ARP table will be hidden from the 4G router and will not know how many devices are in use.

PHK

voluted said:

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

What they are saying is the service is unlimited but they then try to limit it! 

I have "unlimited" with EE with the same clause about 600GB in the terms, they recently sent me a letter to say my contract was coming to an end but don't worry as everything carries on as normal, at the end of the letter it says "data: 9999 GB".

Unlimited with restrictions shouldn't be sold as unlimited IMHO, switching you to a business tariff (if you aren't one) is possibly an unfair term, the reduction in speed could possibly be an unfair term as well as it's varying the service sold and forcing the consumer to accepted reduced benefits under the contract, either than or we are in CCRs territory.   

Unfortunately anyone who realistically stood any chance of getting the use of the term "unlimited" stopped believed it was perfectly acceptable to use "Unlimited" as long as it was asterisked with *Fair Use Policy applies. That would be both the ASA and Ofcom.

For what it's worth, I agree with you. "Unlimited" has a very clear definition that is "not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity, or extent." By introducing throttling when you get to a particular amount of data then it clearly IS restricted. The argument that technically they're not applying a strict limit on the data, but rather the speed, therefore there is no hard limit on the data allowance is ridiculous IMO. This has been going on for the best part of two decades though now, so I don't see it changing anytime soon.

It’s slightly more nuanced than that. The argument given to ASA, Ofcom, Trading Standards etc is that the average user on the tariff uses much much less than the figure quoted and only 1% (or some such low value) of subscribers use the quoted figure or higher. Additionally (as you say) it isn’t a hard cut off at that figure. 

 

HillStreetBlues

PHK said:

It’s slightly more nuanced than that. The argument given to ASA, Ofcom, Trading Standards etc is that the average user on the tariff uses much much less than the figure quoted and only 1% (or some such low value) of subscribers use the quoted figure or higher. Additionally (as you say) it isn’t a hard cut off at that figure. 

 

So state the limit in the headlines, as you say 99% of users will never up up to the limit. If someone does go over the limit then it's up to the company if they then enforce their T&Cs.

PHK

HillStreetBlues said:

PHK said:

It’s slightly more nuanced than that. The argument given to ASA, Ofcom, Trading Standards etc is that the average user on the tariff uses much much less than the figure quoted and only 1% (or some such low value) of subscribers use the quoted figure or higher. Additionally (as you say) it isn’t a hard cut off at that figure. 

 

So state the limit in the headlines, as you say 99% of users will never up up to the limit. If someone does go over the limit then it's up to the company if they then enforce their T&Cs.

I don’t disagree with you, but that is the logic that has been put forward and seems to have been accepted. 

Often the rules surrounding advertising are the result of consumer complaints. (See the famous story of how 8 out of 10 cats prefer Whiskas evolved into 8 out of 10 cats whose owners said they expressed a preference chose Whiskas versus their usual brand. ) 

So, It’s also worth mentioning that for the OP  600GB represents 144 hours of continuous use at the personal Essential plan maximum download rate of 10Mbps.  Bearing in mind that you wouldn’t be at max download rate all the time, you’d be talking even longer before you reached 600GB. In other words you’d struggle to use 600GB and therefore unlikely you’d complain.