Cable Internet Account Suspended

[oogabooga]

I don't download more then 50g/month but between all my web surfing, the five other people living in our place i'm sure we easily reach 50gigs/month.

Seems like a short limit.

Originally posted by: ebaycj
If all of your posts are like this, it's no wonder you hit your 50GB monthly limit.

this made me chuckle I'm not sure the total of all the replies have more words then the OP was an interesting read though.

 

[sniperruff]

Originally posted by: BigJ

Originally posted by: sniperruff
they should disclose it, but they have the right not to. and if they think being connected 24/7 is abusive behavior, it's their right to cut your internet as well.

i don't know much about your connection, but as OP stated, his internet is $82/month... obviously the supply of bandwidth in where he lives is limited. but hey, if your ISP cuts your internet, they have every right to do that as long as they include it in the terms of service.

but i guess the CS on their half is a bit poor, but it still remains that they have the right to terminate your service whenever they want for whatever reason.

You want to know bad?

OptimumOnline, an entity of Cablevision, basically has the following policy:

If you use your full upload bandwidth for more than an hour, you get capped for a day to 1/10th of the speed.

Most of the times, they forget to remove the cap, and you have to bitch and moan to actually get them to remove it. If it happens more than one or two times, they'll basically cap your upload for at least a 1/4 of the year.

Nowhere is an actual upload limit outlined in their TOS, and you can only find out this information from them by calling tech support.

Would you say that using your upload bandwidth for an hour is an abuse of their service? Because OptOnline sure does. I say it's a more of an abuse of their power.

No wonder why FIOS is cleaning house in the areas its rolling out. I know I switched.

yeah a house i lived in had OOL and a kid was BTing and never bothered to limit his UL... and yeah things got real slow on a connection shared between 8 kids.

but hey if OOL has it in their TOS, more power to them.

as much as they want to sugarcoat how fast their service is and how their internet will improve your life and such, they're just a business, and their sole objective is to make more money for their shareholders, not looking out for every joe and bob.

and think about it, even if a compant has excellent customer service, what's their ultimate motive? to make more money off you.

 

[altonb1]

I've never checked my monthly usage before, but I guess I should look into it. I have a laptop that I use for email, anadtech and the occasional torrent. Most of the time, I d/l tv shows that I wanted to see and forgot to watch, tape, etc.

HOWEVER, my kids are on my desktop constantly. Literally, they are online pretty much all day playing games at shockwave, disney, etc. With 3 kids, there is a lot of bickering about who's turn it is, so someone is almost always using the connection. I have often found one on my laptop and the other on the desktop playing Disney's VMK together. I bet I could hit their caps pretty easily if I tried....

 

[SampSon]

I'm not disagreeing with anything you said, and you're not even addressing the points I specified.

All I'm saying is it's understandable why the OP is peeved. It is also not unheard of for people to use 50gbs of bandwidth in a month, or even a rarity at the connection speeds we have these days.

On top of that, for a service contract like this, the ISP really should specify that there are bandwidth limits and what they are. Having an open-ended catch-all like this allows for abuse.

All of your points were addressed. Actually I don't think you have many "points" to begin with. You're basically saying you just don't like the way these ISPs do business. But I understand where you're coming from. You're basically asking a company to outline it's rules for the lowest common denominator.
While I guess I can agree with that, I can also see the other side of the story. A company should have complete control over it's services. If it doesn't then people will -always- abuse it.
If a companies way of doing business drives its customers away, then there will usually be a competitor there to snatch up that customer base.

As for your personal usage, you have to go find a service provider that caters to your type of useage. Reality is that you are not the type of service usage that the vast majority of the population falls into. Though if you were limited in bandwidth options and you couldn't get an unlimited amount of bandwidth, you would find other ways of having your media with you. So ultimately your points are moot. If you didn't have a 10mb connection and unlimited bandwidth then you probably wouldn't have a media server. I'm willing to be there are provisions in your FIOS contracts that allow them to cut your service and cancel your account at anytime they like for running a server they deem unacceptable.

Moral of the story: At least the OP has high-speed internet.

 

[Dunbar]

Originally posted by: VenomXTF
Lets use your ticket analogy. How about you buy a regular coach-class ticket from NY to California. You get on the plane, ticket paid and all, take off. 6% through your flight the plane lands, say in Pennsylvania. You get kicked off the plane. Go to the customer service at the Airport and they tell you "sorry, gas costs too much so we can't fly you all the way to California."

Venom, the scenario you describe is impossible in the US. The airlines are bound by the contract of carriage. By law, the airline would have to get you to your destination or compensate you (pay double your one-way ticket price.)

In any event, you're really saying that if the cable company posted the limit on their website you wouldn't have a problem with it? The first time they shut off your service you would figure this number out, no? If you don't like it than take your business elsewhere. Does it suck for you, sure but at 50GB they are surely losing money on your account. My guess is something like 5% of users use 90% of the bandwidth. By targeting those "heavy users" the cable companies are making a smart financial decision. And 50GB really doesn't seem like an unreasonable cutoff for a $45/mo cable modem subscription.

 

[erikistired]

after all that i would have cancelled it anyway. if comcast pulls that junk on me i have no problem going back to earthlink dsl. it won't be quite as speedy but at least they didn't put any restrictions on me.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Dunbar

Venom, the scenario you describe is impossible in the US. The airlines are bound by the contract of carriage. By law, the airline would have to get you to your destination or compensate you (pay double your one-way ticket price.)

In any event, you're really saying that if the cable company posted the limit on their website you wouldn't have a problem with it? The first time they shut off your service you would figure this number out, no? If you don't like it than take your business elsewhere. Does it suck for you, sure but at 50GB they are surely losing money on your account. My guess is something like 5% of users use 90% of the bandwidth. By targeting those "heavy users" the cable companies are making a smart financial decision. And 50GB really doesn't seem like an unreasonable cutoff for a $45/mo cable modem subscription.

You're dead on with 5% of the users take 90% of the bandwidth.

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: SampSon

I'm not disagreeing with anything you said, and you're not even addressing the points I specified.

All I'm saying is it's understandable why the OP is peeved. It is also not unheard of for people to use 50gbs of bandwidth in a month, or even a rarity at the connection speeds we have these days.

On top of that, for a service contract like this, the ISP really should specify that there are bandwidth limits and what they are. Having an open-ended catch-all like this allows for abuse.

All of your points were addressed. Actually I don't think you have many "points" to begin with. You're basically saying you just don't like the way these ISPs do business. But I understand where you're coming from. You're basically asking a company to outline it's rules for the lowest common denominator.
While I guess I can agree with that, I can also see the other side of the story. A company should have complete control over it's services. If it doesn't then people will -always- abuse it.
If a companies way of doing business drives its customers away, then there will usually be a competitor there to snatch up that customer base.

As for your personal usage, you have to go find a service provider that caters to your type of useage. Reality is that you are not the type of service usage that the vast majority of the population falls into. Though if you were limited in bandwidth options and you couldn't get an unlimited amount of bandwidth, you would find other ways of having your media with you. So ultimately your points are moot. If you didn't have a 10mb connection and unlimited bandwidth then you probably wouldn't have a media server. I'm willing to be there are provisions in your FIOS contracts that allow them to cut your service and cancel your account at anytime they like for running a server they deem unacceptable.

Moral of the story: At least the OP has high-speed internet.

Oh there is and they can. However, it's not like I'm abusing their services (that's the key word). I have a 2mbps (~240kB/s) Up connection with them, and a couple of gigs a month upload is nothing for them. If there wasn't unlimited bandwidth, or I had restricted access, I'd simply drop the company, find a cheap alternative, and use the excess money to have a media PC with me. Considering Optonline was around $50/month, an extra $350 towards a PC would cover the portable hard drives I need well.

As for outlining rules for the lowest common denominator, all I'm asking is they outline their rules so there's less of a potential for abuse. For example, I believe that OptOnline abuses the powers provided to them in the contract when they rate-limit customers for uploading for an hour.

I disliked their practices, so I switched my family's ISP to Verizon FIOS, and my parents and 2 siblings haven't had any complaints over the past 2 months. Neither do I, even though I'm down here in Maryland and only use it when retreiving files.

 

[VenomXTF]

Originally posted by: Dunbar

Originally posted by: VenomXTF
Lets use your ticket analogy. How about you buy a regular coach-class ticket from NY to California. You get on the plane, ticket paid and all, take off. 6% through your flight the plane lands, say in Pennsylvania. You get kicked off the plane. Go to the customer service at the Airport and they tell you "sorry, gas costs too much so we can't fly you all the way to California."

Venom, the scenario you describe is impossible in the US. The airlines are bound by the contract of carriage. By law, the airline would have to get you to your destination or compensate you (pay double your one-way ticket price.)

In any event, you're really saying that if the cable company posted the limit on their website you wouldn't have a problem with it? The first time they shut off your service you would figure this number out, no? If you don't like it than take your business elsewhere. Does it suck for you, sure but at 50GB they are surely losing money on your account. My guess is something like 5% of users use 90% of the bandwidth. By targeting those "heavy users" the cable companies are making a smart financial decision. And 50GB really doesn't seem like an unreasonable cutoff for a $45/mo cable modem subscription.

Ok, it wasn't ment to be full proof... but add to that; When you get off the plane you are told you will be delayed for 30 hours at which point they will let you travel 50 more miles, as that is the limit per flight. Does't matter if the plane can travel 1,500 miles in a single flight. The ticket you bought will still get you to California, just with some limits. Of course had you bought First Class you wouldn't have any limits (or so according to Spidey). Add to that being the only mode of transportation, as they have a monopoly. Only other option is to walk. While it's really regulated and as you say illegal in the US, the ISP reasons for suspending an account or setting a bandwidth limit are not, so you can't really use "it's against the law" reasoning.

Did you read what happened? My account was suspended for 30 days with no notice. No phone call. No letter. No email. It was just shut off. After calling three times, I finally find out that a there was "excessive" bandwidth use and the account was suspended. I was supposed to get 3 letters that they "sent" telling me that the account will be suspended if it continues. I never received any such letters, and they blame the post office, saying that they were sent to the correct address by them. If we didn't get them, too bad for us, go complain to the post office that you're internet is shut off. After 4 hours of talking to 10-15 different people who all tell me the internet will not be turned back on, I finally get put through to the manager at Prolog, who tells me about a 50GB limit and turns it back on. If I had known about this limit before hand, or received these letters, a phone call, or any information from them I would of kept an eye out on bandwidth use. Not have my internet stop working without me or even the cable company knowing what's going on. So while the one problem is that now this is "limited" internet connection and the other is how Prolog does business and deals with loyal customers.

Another problem is, as I've stated before, there is NO OTHER OPTION. This is the only single available broadband option. BRC/Prolog pretty much have a monopoly in this area, and I do not want to go back to 28.8K (56K wasn't very stable when I had it before cable) if I have a choice. There is no Comcast, no Verizon here.

Originally posted by: fisher
after all that i would have cancelled it anyway. if comcast pulls that junk on me i have no problem going back to earthlink dsl. it won't be quite as speedy but at least they didn't put any restrictions on me.

If there was any other option, even slower DSL, I would cancel. Unlike you, I don't have the option to "go back to earthlink dsl." Selling the house is the only option if we want a different ISP, and that is what will happen shortly.

 

[ModeEngage]

Originally posted by: VenomXTF

Originally posted by: n30
If there was no written statement of this mysterious "bandwidth limit," how the hell can they pull this garbage? Makes no sense to me. You definitely got the ass end of the stick =\

Read my link about Comcast.

Done. Hella lame. This kind of stuff should be plastered over all of their plans if they're going to enforce it. Fuzzy EULAs are no way to deal with it =\

 

[Dunbar]

Originally posted by: VenomXTF
Ok, it wasn't ment to be full proof... but add to that; When you get off the plane you are told you will be delayed for 30 hours at which point they will let you travel 50 more miles, as that is the limit per flight. Does't matter if the plane can travel 1,500 miles in a single flight. The ticket you bought will still get you to California, just with some limits.

They actually have to get you there within something like 4-8 hours of the original arrival time or you are due compensation. Anyways, I certainly agree that they could of communicated this to you better. We all know good phone support basically doesn't exist any more these days. It does suck that you have no other option, but some people don't even have the option of high speed internet access at all. As others have pointed out, there's no god given right to cheap limitless broadband internet access in this country. I think what a lot of people are saying is that the cable company certainly has the right in their T&C to define excessive useage as they please. And really 50GB/mo. seems like a pretty reasonable number to me.

 

[tami]

Originally posted by: VenomXTF

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Blue Ridge cable, eh? Where are you located, if I might ask? I've also got Blue Ridge, and have received 2 of the bandwidth warnings. It's so very nice of them to say NOWHERE on their website what the monthly bandwidth allotment is.

I was just glad to get home from college though - we are allowed 1.5GB/week of downloads and 1.5GB/week of uploads. Yeah, total monthly download allottment of 6GB. That sucked. In the first week on campus I exceeded my 1.5GB. By about 2GB. In the first 3 days. Without filesharing or porn. I'll admit it - the first weekend on campus was boring as hell, and I wandered onto Metacafe.
The next time I exceeded, it was from downloading high-res pictures from Cassini and the MER sites, as well as user-created panoramas from another forum I frequent. Some of those things are over 50MB. High-res TIFF's also are quite large. Listening to online radio stations almost put me over another time.

I live in Milford, PA. The letters that we were supposed to get were not sent by Blue Ridge Cable but by Prolog (PTD). We have had no problems with BRC. PTD controlls most of the internet/fiber in the NE PA area.

and you can't get verizon DSL? i know that it's becoming more widely available to NEPA residents.

 

[tami]

Originally posted by: SampSon
You guys honestly think this is a "good read"?

nah, it could've been truncated and still make the same point.

like..

"i live in the boondocks where internet is a big deal. one day, my internet stopped working. i called them. i kept getting shifted from dept to dept who told me my internet was shut off for 30 days and that i supposedly received 3 warning letters before the termination (i did not and they kept blaming the post office for losing the letters). eventually, after 4 hours, i found out it was because i downloaded over 50gb in a month and this was never stated in their TOS. they turned it on. what are your thoughts?"

that would have been easier to read.

 

[VenomXTF]

Originally posted by: tami

Originally posted by: SampSon
You guys honestly think this is a "good read"?

nah, it could've been truncated and still make the same point.

like..

"i live in the boondocks where internet is a big deal. one day, my internet stopped working. i called them. i kept getting shifted from dept to dept who told me my internet was shut off for 30 days and that i supposedly received 3 warning letters before the termination (i did not and they kept blaming the post office for losing the letters). eventually, after 4 hours, i found out it was because i downloaded over 50gb in a month and this was never stated in their TOS. they turned it on. what are your thoughts?"

that would have been easier to read.

No I can't get verizon DSL. I really feel like a broken record now.

As far as a summary vs my story. Well you don't get the same idea of what happened, of what the customer service said. The point was not that there was a limit now, but how they go about blaming the post office, suspending the account and only when you get to a high up manager finding out that there is a limit, what it is, and getting your internet turned back on after 3 days.

Plus I posted cliffs, and I didn't make anyone read it who didn't want to read a long story. Who knows, maybe my story will help someone who gets in the same situation with their ISP. So if you don't like long rants, click back on your web browser.

 

[cliftonite]

<--- goes outside and pets the FIOS ONT

 

[VenomXTF]

Originally posted by: cliftonite
<--- goes outside and pets the FIOS ONT

*hopes cliftonite gets attacked by ninja squirrels*

 

[elkinm]

Boy am I glad I have DSL. It is only 2.5 Mbps, good for about 260 KB/s, compared to true 6 Mbps or higher with cable.

260*60 = 15600 KB = 15.6 MB/min. 15600*60 = 936000 KB/hour or 936 MB per hour. So I believe I can download nearly a gigabyte in just one hour.

Judging from this then I easily download over 50 GB or hundreds of GBs simply from general large files and trailers, plus any other large files and programs you can easily download.

I keep thinking about those turtles in the comcast commercials which keep saying that Comcast is always fast. Here comcast is definitely saying that that is very untrue.

Do I smell a false advertising law suit at the very least or what?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Originally posted by: elkinm
Boy am I glad I have DSL. It is only 2.5 Mbps, good for about 260 KB/s, compared to true 6 Mbps or higher with cable.

260*60 = 15600 KB = 15.6 MB/min. 15600*60 = 936000 KB/hour or 936 MB per hour. So I believe I can download nearly a gigabyte in just one hour.

Judging from this then I easily download over 50 GB or hundreds of GBs simply from general large files and trailers, plus any other large files and programs you can easily download.

I keep thinking about those turtles in the comcast commercials which keep saying that Comcast is always fast. Here comcast is definitely saying that that is very untrue.

Do I smell a false advertising law suit at the very least or what?

Ok maybe I only have 400gb of hard drive space, but seriously, you have to be downloading terabytes to be shut down.

Comcast does not shut ppl down for downloading 50gb of data amonth. Even that is excessive IMO. How many TV episodes is that? 150? Geez.

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: elkinm
Boy am I glad I have DSL. It is only 2.5 Mbps, good for about 260 KB/s, compared to true 6 Mbps or higher with cable.

260*60 = 15600 KB = 15.6 MB/min. 15600*60 = 936000 KB/hour or 936 MB per hour. So I believe I can download nearly a gigabyte in just one hour.

Judging from this then I easily download over 50 GB or hundreds of GBs simply from general large files and trailers, plus any other large files and programs you can easily download.

I keep thinking about those turtles in the comcast commercials which keep saying that Comcast is always fast. Here comcast is definitely saying that that is very untrue.

Do I smell a false advertising law suit at the very least or what?

I have comcast and can download at 500-600KBps.

 

[VenomXTF]

Originally posted by: DLeRium

Originally posted by: elkinm
Boy am I glad I have DSL. It is only 2.5 Mbps, good for about 260 KB/s, compared to true 6 Mbps or higher with cable.

260*60 = 15600 KB = 15.6 MB/min. 15600*60 = 936000 KB/hour or 936 MB per hour. So I believe I can download nearly a gigabyte in just one hour.

Judging from this then I easily download over 50 GB or hundreds of GBs simply from general large files and trailers, plus any other large files and programs you can easily download.

I keep thinking about those turtles in the comcast commercials which keep saying that Comcast is always fast. Here comcast is definitely saying that that is very untrue.

Do I smell a false advertising law suit at the very least or what?

Ok maybe I only have 400gb of hard drive space, but seriously, you have to be downloading terabytes to be shut down.

Comcast does not shut ppl down for downloading 50gb of data amonth. Even that is excessive IMO. How many TV episodes is that? 150? Geez.

Think about it this way, since you bring up video. One full VOD Blu-Ray (when ever that will be possible) movie can max out the 50GB limit for the whole month. One. Single. Movie.

I only have a 200GB (which has about 50GB free after all the programs/games/windows/vista) harddrive in my PC, and 20GB harddrive in my Xbox 360. I already explained what I downloaded last month and how easily it is to use up the bandwidth. It's not just files that use bandwidth though, so your 400GB of hard drive space really doesn't mean much when talking about internet bandwidth.

 

[acole1]

report to the BBB and get a lawyer

 

[nsafreak]

Good read. 50GB a month is a downright small bandwidth cap and frankly I can't understand why they'd impose something like that. I don't consider myself a heavy downloader and I probably come close to that (if not exceed) that limit within a month on a regular basis. These past 2 months I have downloaded the Vista Beta, Suse 10.1 on DVD, Prey, various Valve downloads, Office 2007 Beta 2, EVE Online (needed a new download for the Cedega Linux install), Prey demo, and various other legal files. If I were you I'd give the telco a call anyways and see if they can set you up with a trial. That way you can see if it will fit your needs while still having cable available.

 

[n7]

LOL.


You guys are lucky.

In Alberta, both ISPs (cause that's all we really have) have retardly low limits & one throttles BT traffic (though encryption works around that presently).

 

[The Batt?sai]

Originally posted by: Riceball
I average 300gbs up and down a month, SBC never complains.

:Q

how on earth did u get 300 GBS up??

 

[saymyname]

I read the whole thing. Was interesting. I kept thinking the cable guy was going to hook you up with faster internet or something.

Oh well.

The day they put limits like this on the internet, the day the internet dies. It has nothing to do with downloading porn or illegal software either. Just watching news clips, downloading HD video, listening to rapsody, and then stuff like vista etc has got to be close to 50GB if not more.