Usage gone through the roof. 100GB Cap blown away -- Or so they say.

[kbconsultancy]

Re-posting .. The original didn't seem to get listed.  I think my account was in limbo, waiting for me to confirm my email address....  Originally posted into the abyss yesterday -- 03/12/14

Hiya ...  Firstly I have seen many accounts online of folks who have had issues with exceeding their caps and in many cases they were not at fault.

I have been a BT business infinity customer for nearly 2 years.  I have *Never* exceeded my 100GB cap up until the 'surprise' bill last week.  They stated I had gone over for Sept and Oct.  I thought this was strange and picked up the phone.

The lady I spoke with stated that I had used ~110GB in Sept and 329GB in Oct!  This was lunacy.  My particular setup is a Linux flavoured box running as the firewall / gateway for the internal network and this connects directly to the BT Hub.  All internal devices will funnel through this particular firewall host with the exception of -  my children's tablets.  Avvid youtubers, I was mindful that they may make a dent in the capped allowance.  With this, many months ago I installed the BTWifi App.  In my mind, this would mitigate the risk of them quota busting.

It bugged me no end, so I installed / configured vnstat to watch the linux box's external network adaptor.  I have the following the usage over the past few days.

    day         rx      |     tx      |    total    |   avg. rate
     ------------------------+-------------+-----------​​--+---------------
      11/28/14    230.60 MiB |   17.84 MiB |  248.44 MiB |   23.56 kbit/s
      11/29/14    326.98 MiB |  104.82 MiB |  431.80 MiB |   40.94 kbit/s
      11/30/14      1.11 GiB |   85.50 MiB |    1.19 GiB |  115.54 kbit/s
      12/01/14    182.91 MiB |   53.69 MiB |  236.60 MiB |   22.43 kbit/s
      12/02/14    380.40 MiB |   56.26 MiB |  436.67 MiB |   41.40 kbit/s
      12/03/14    136.07 MiB |   11.99 MiB |  148.06 MiB |   19.72 kbit/s

Today, I called up BT and somehow managed to mess up on the IVR and ended up talking to different group and a fantastic chap called Steve.  Great guy.  He was able to tell me what he was seeing with respect to usage.  He could not see today, but could see yesterday.  He had 1.417GB ...  My box tells me 436.67MiB = 457.88MB   So there's a HUGE discrepancy right there!

So I thought, righty, connect up to the Hub and see what it says.  Hub says ->

Internet Connection Configuration

Connection time:                                    4days, 08:11:14

Data Transmitted/Received (GB):             0.4/1.4

Which is closer to what I see, but somewhat less.

Also, he looked back at my historical information this year. 20 - 60GB was the norm pretty much for the previous months, and some of those included my youtube loving kids.  The only explanation I can think of is that maybe they lumped in the BTWifi usage with my regular usage.  But even still, 300GB...  In ONE month.  My kids would have tablet shaped eyes (looked at a web calculator - 50 hrs youtube is ~15GB  -- src- http://www.three.com.hk/website/appmanager/three/h​​ome?_nfpb=true&pageid=281001&_pageLabel=P6001931...

Steve, one of the most helpful people I have ever spoken to advised I email the query to a liteuseage address.  However, I have absolutely no idea how long they're going to take to respond or get back to me.  I just know in a few days time, BT are going to take out the £££s for this highly questionable overuse.  I, personally do not believe their numbers.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  This is driving me insane (and potentially, understandably, moving on....)

Thanks,

PB...

[markp]

Hi kbconsultancy,

Your BT WiFi  usage is totally separate and does not get added onto your allowed allowance.  I have spoken to the team that deal with the  liteusage email address and they are going to pick up your email and investigate it as soon as they can for you.

Markp

[DaveA]

Hi,

Dave from the tech helpdesk here. I've sent an email to you with a bunch of stuff, so you'll find full details there. In summary: - The 300 GB was a mistake.

Don't know if it's a mistype or the adjustment was meant for another account. There have been adjustments made on a number of accounts for usage due to something about the clock changes. Sorry about that.

The usage discrepancy is going to have to be looked into, but something to bear in mind is that devices can connect directly to the router, which won't track on something like your firewall. I also have to look into the Wifi app since I haven't used it, but I do wonder if that's part of the difference. Anyway have a read of the email and let me know.

Thanks.

Dave A

[kbconsultancy · Accepted solution]

Thanks Mark and Dave A.  Very much appreciate your responses.  I have just read your email and thank you for the detail.  To anyone reading this, there isn't really any additional info in the email, just a little more specific.

I shall do as asked on the email.  Thanks again.

Paul B