The prices for Claranet's broadband products seem hard to find. Unless I'm missing something obvious. A link to a customer portal that requires a login seems rather pointless.

As I remember them, they are one of the upmarket niche ISPs, aiming principally at business customers.

The detail of your reply, faced with the simplicity of consumer choice as I explained, does suggest a hidden agenda. I too remember the mini-row when the charge was increased from, IIRC, £2 per GB to £5 per 5GB.

I don't recall any complaints since from any of the 600,000+ customer base. Do you? Maybe Plusnet customers are savvy enough to have understood the pricing and can live with it.

Unbelievable, isn't it, given the complexity and hiding of it!?

In reply to a post by ultra:

Personally I have set the limit to 0 so I won't pay any excess, as I am aware of the consequences and unwilling to gift PN a few quid if I just happened to go 'over'.

It is to Plusnet's credit that they offer a facility to cap extra spending to 0. BT, on the other hand, charge £5 per 5GB too, and offer no facility to cap it.

Agreed, glad they do offer the ability to block excess charges, so there are no nasty (bank related) shocks if I ever did slip over the limit.

One thing (on the one time I went over) I noticed was that the 'reset' is dependent on the billing system running past that user's account. Have to say that if they had incorporated one of my suggestions (send an e-mail with the past month's daily usage figures, then reset the counters) they might have also been able to 'reset' the 256 kbps limiter rule for anyone who went over, as a first task to apply changes to all 'billed this day' accounts (and there are surely around 20,000 to be billed so puzzled it took 4 hours before my speed was reset [once my payment was notified and I was classed as being in a new billing month]).

I always recommend Plusnet over BT in Market 1 areas, the price is much the same, but the ability to cap excess usage spending is a crucial feature I feel. Given that Plusnet are owned by BT you'd think BT could implement it, so perhaps they don't purely because it's profitable not to.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

The prices for Claranet's broadband products seem hard to find. Unless I'm missing something obvious. A link to a customer portal that requires a login seems rather pointless.

It was to describe the mechanism for topping up that I was quoting - that it includes their portal was as shown on their FAQ page and the quote would have been incomplete without it. Not sure that the actual prices for products are needed, if one is just comparing topping-up or 'excess use' charges. As it happens, I get the impression they have an 'unlimited' policy but with the 'normal' 'we protect our network from excessive use' condition.

As I remember them, they are one of the upmarket niche ISPs, aiming principally at business customers.

Indeed, Clara.Net is aiming at business, but set up claranetsoho.co.uk (think it was used in the FAQ link) but they seem to have changed their accounts from ones I was familiar with early in the year. ThinkBroadband has news items in July concerning the launch of Childsafe under the Claranet SOHO 'business' (I suspect it is ex-VIA Networks staff as the SOHO people are based in Warrington, and Clara took over VIA a few years ago)

See www.claranetsoho.co.uk/broadband

The detail of your reply, faced with the simplicity of consumer choice as I explained, does suggest a hidden agenda. I too remember the mini-row when the charge was increased from, IIRC, £2 per GB to £5 per 5GB.

We'll have to agree to disagree - I've no 'agenda' - I just made the point the 5 quid fee might be a shock once someone finds the non-rollover policy, and flat fee, whether you use 5 MB or 5GB before billing cycle resets your allowance.

I don't recall any complaints since from any of the 600,000+ customer base. Do you? Maybe Plusnet customers are savvy enough to have understood the pricing and can live with it.

Unbelievable, isn't it, given the complexity and hiding of it!?

I've seen the 600,000+ number now and then (last I remember it was estimated at 400,000, but maybe that was before taking on Madasafish customers, so I am probably out of date!), but suspect the vast majority of customers never noticed the news of the change, and I suspect that something like 1-3% of users actually go to the various discussion areas. It's not uncommon to see the same people in the same places as the ISP reps such as Bob and so on.

There's mention on the Residential Broadband FAQ of the 2 quid for 2 GB charge.

"8. What happens if I go over my monthly usage allowance?

For the majority of customers an extra 5GB will be added to your allowance for the month. This costs £5 which will be added to your next bill. (Customers on some older products will be charged £2 per 2GB block)."

PN cited (AFAICR) something about it being more efficient for them to charge a higher sum (presumably so bank charges were a smaller portion of the amount charged, while customer was also less likely to use the full quantity, so there was more profit per GB used)

PN would not budge despite requests not to go that way (just as there were requests to notify Market 2 users when the costs were going lower) - seems PN staff are willing to read the requests but doing so rarely seems to lead to any changes.

(edit to remove nested quotes, caused by my mangling the original quoted post!)

Edited by deleted (Fri 02-Nov-12 12:54:20)

I'd like mirror this also.

Just ordered the Fibre extra only package (parents pay line rental). They asked if I'd like to switch to phone line aswell, I told them that my parents pay it and they where fine with that (not at all pushy).
Also they where fine with me booking a bit later than normal, 31st of December (work at a school and it would be easier for me in my holidays.

Something I noticed in T+C for Tesco brodband was that they mention a limit of 100 GB and in the small print can charge a fee (presumably per GB or MB) but don't specify it anywhere.

It may be that they just warn for small over-runs, or request a customer transfer away to another ISP, but I'm not sure where they stand under OFT rules on being 'fair' if they don't show explicitly what they charge, but have say a 10p per MB fee and implemented it if someone went over the 100 GB allowance (say to 200 GB, which is far from impossible these days on anything of reasonable (read 8+ Mbps) speed).

10p per MB is cheaper than some mobile networks charge for an excess over 20 MB in a day (!) Have even seen fees of 1.5p per kb in days gone by. But in the Tesco example, just keeping to round figures, an overrun of 100 GB = 100 x 1000 (MB) x 0.1 pounds = 100x100 = 10,000 pounds

I spoke to someone, to ask how much they charge, as it was "unclear" and got no sensible answers - ie we don't charge... when I pointed out their T+C clause means they 'might' charge, the call was dropped.

How is Tesco connected to PN? Are you thinking of John Lewis?

Where do you see a limit of 100 GB?

In reference to www.tescobroadband.com/help-and-support/articles/view/1891:

11. FAIR USE POLICY

11.1 So that we can provide Tesco Broadband With Calls and Tesco Broadband Only fairly for all our customers, you agree to comply with our Fair Use Policy set out in this paragraph 11. Although your internet use of Tesco Broadband With Calls and Tesco Broadband Only may be unlimited, we may impose a fair use limit on your broadband usage, beyond which additional charges may apply. Any such limit will be clearly set out at www.tescobroadband.com/terms (non-existent) or in our marketing materials

Ah, found it! There is no fee for for overrunning; you are just warned and then kicked off:

In reference to www.tescobroadband.com/Help-and-Support/Articles/View/2122:

We regularly monitor and review our customer�s collective and average monthly usage to set our fair usage limit (FUL) at a level that will not affect the majority (at least 95%) of our customers. Currently the FUL is set at 100GB per month. If a customer regularly downloads in excess of the FUL, we may take the following steps:

1. When we first notice that a customer has exceeded the FUL, we may contact the customer to bring the matter to their attention. We will ask the customer to modify their usage.

2. If the customer does not modify their usage but continues to exceed the FUL for a further two consecutive months, we may terminate the customer�s service.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Ah, found it! There is no fee for for overrunning

But your previous quote does say "beyond which additional charges may apply".