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"As you can see I'm only at 26.35% and (Cogeco's) notification says I'm at 85% (of my allowance)?" (click to enlarge)
“You can trust us, we’re the cable company!”
One major implication of Internet Overcharging schemes is putting your faith in an industry that already strains credulity when it comes to justifying rationing and price gouging your Internet access.
Back in April, we raised the issue of “meters” and “gas gauges” being used to measure customer usage having absolutely no oversight or verification that the “readings” they were providing actually represented your usage.
Our concerns were justified.
Broadband Reports has been tracking Cogeco customers finding their own measurements completely at odds with the Canadian cable operator that often reports far different numbers.
In the end, whose “meter” will Cogeco trust? Theirs of course.
Here are some Cogeco customers sharing their frustrations:
“Well today is Friday the 19th of June and the Monitor is still down and with this being the month that we have to pay you would think the system would be up and working properly. I have a strange feeling that come some time next month people are going to open there bills and see extra charges that shouldn’t be there and Cogeco is going to end up losing a bunch of customers.”
“I don’t understand how they can charge for overages if they can’t properly meter their services.”
“Mine is showing 0 for both upload and download for the past 4 days. Then again I am not going to complain about it not reporting my usage. I kinda hope it stays this way.”
“Here’s a direct quote from my overage email received on Friday: “You have reached 100% of your Internet usage monthly limit. You have reached the MAXIMUM of your Internet usage monthly limit. Additional usage charges will be credited this month. Charges for additional usage will not take effect until June 2009. I also show 40GB of usage on June 1st while each day after shows normal daily habits. Good job Cogeco. Combined with the increased rate for the Pro package, your overage charges are already forcing me to consider other tv and internet providers.”
“I think what this might do is force users to suck down every byte of their Cap to use their connection to the fullest. Before you never cared, because you could always just get what you wanted, when you wanted. But now since its monitored I know I am going to make sure that take full advantage every month.”
“Not showing any bandwidth for the past 3 days – how can Cogeco prove the authenticity of the meter? Bull.”
“This is exactly what I was thinking. Three days without any change to the meter, and I am supposed to pay for this?”
“This morning, it is telling me am I at 92%… there’s no way I did almost 12 GB of transfer yesterday. What is up with this thing? At this rate, I’m going to probably have to fork over some $$ for extra bandwidth this month, but I’m really wondering how accurate this thing is.”
“I called in to see what I’m at for the month, the rep said 68GB – monitor showing 105GB with 4 blank days. Who the hell is right?”
“First time I pay an overage I’m canceling.”
“Even if these are not governed by Weights and Measurements Canada, there would be a lawsuit for billing on services not rendered. I’m paying for 100GB, and being overbilled at 23GB. Breach of contract, fraud, take your pick.”
Time Warner Cable’s gas gauge doesn’t work either. Wait, what’s that? OH RIGHT…they haven’t provided one yet despite their claims to do so “very soon” so people could get a feel for how much they use.
Maybe my understanding is wrong, but I was under the impression they were still rolling out the gauge as part of their re-education campaign to make it a softer blow when it comes up again but people at least have a way to see how much they “actually use”.
I’ll (dis-)believe it when I see it (or more accurately when I compare their numbers to my own from my router behind their modem).
They may also recognize the fact the moment it does appear, it’s like pouring their gasoline on our flame. It will enrage consumers all over again.
I’m sure Cogeco’s botched “gas gauge” situation don’t help TWC’s case either.
Madoffism is par for the cable company course
I’ve mentioned this before, but let me drag it into the conversation again: The implementation of the metering is likely to be a HUGE hassle for consumers, far more than many people are assuming.
My reason for saying this is simple: I had a nightmarish run-in with Earthlink, which hosts my web site. My normal monthly bill is $20. Then one month some time back I found that they had charged me $139 for a single month, claiming I had gone way over my monthly transfer allotment. I checked their official gas gauge, and it said I was just under my limit for the month. I called CS and wound up having an incredibly frustrating conversation with one of their reps. He kept insisting that I agree to monitor my usage and recognize that I was responsible for overages, and I kept telling him that I did monitor it (which I had), and that according to THEIR numbers I had not gone over their sacred limit.
The conversation got louder and more pointed, and went in circles until he agreed to roll back the extra $119 charge just this one time–and then insisted yet again that I agree to the terms mentioned above.
This is the point we need to drive home to the mainstream consumers: Tiered service levels and bandwidth limits results in a major, ongoing hassle for the consumer. The company will screw up the billing and metering, and even if they don’t, the average customer has a constant chore of watching the household’s usage, month in and month out. I am convinced that this is the real cost they want to impose on consumers: They want it to be such a huge inconvenience that customers won’t even consider watching online media and getting within 20% of their monthly limit.
Communicate the reality of living with tiered service and caps to the average customer, and I guarantee that the uproar the next time TW tries to impose this new system will be much louder than it was last time.
I hope you took your business elsewhere. A “one time” credit for a problem on their end hardly inspires confidence. We’ve had good results with Layered Tech, Textdrive and Slicehost. 1and1 and GoDaddy work for domain names, but web hosting with either is problematic if traffic ever spikes. I’ve steered completely clear of the “oversellers” like Dreamhost, Bluehost, Host Gator, and most of the others that you’ll find all over those suspect “top 10 webhosting” lists that live off the affiliate income they earn when someone signs up.
If a website ever becomes popular on one of those hosts, they cut you off for overusing their capacity. That’s why those traffic and disk space allowances seem so high – you are usually thrown out before you come close to nearing them.
That does remind me of how HostGator sells their 1TB Disk space (probably the entire server’s drive), unmetered bandwidth package. Fill up that 1TB and you’ve basically got the server to yourself, and of course that goes for a boot.
Even if their meter worked properly, just the idea of having to watch a meter to make sure my internet connection wasn’t going over its limit sounds like something from out of a nightmare.
There are no caps or limits in countries like Japan, South Korea, and Sweden, so how exactly does Canada’s ISPs justify themselves?
Seriously, Canada’s government has totally failed its people in this case. What a joke that companies can make so many billions in profit yet still hold hostage and abuse *an entire nation* of consumers.
Sure, a newly elected government might fix the situation, but no one’s going to force these ISPs to give back the money they stole from people. It’s a sad, sad case of democracy falling to the selfish interests of the ruling party.
I’ve been running a meter since April, and have yet to see anything from Time Warner. The second a gas gauge shows up on my bill, they’re getting a call.
I like the local guys, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to tolerate an inaccurate gauge.
[...] that customers say can be off from dozens to hundreds of megabytes every day. Stop the Cap! also reported on this issue in June, with customers outraged that their monthly bill’s accuracy depends on a tool that is [...]