BT Infinity - going well over the usage allowance

Hi, just trying to help out an acquaintance... they've got a BT Infinity package with a 90GB usage allowance, which thus far seems to have worked out ok for them... until now!

Not sure how it happened, it was possibly a visitor who bought a new laptop and then used their broadband to download some major updates... anyway that's kinda irrelevant now.

They are almost 20GB over their usage limit this month (November), with a £1.80 per GB charge this is going to get expensive!!!

If they were to upgrade their broadband package to unlimited, might it be possible for BT to quash the excess usage charges for this month?

Also, is it possible to upgrade a BT Broadband package without entering into a new 12 month contract? They are going to be moving house within the next 12 months... I guess they could just transfer the BT service to the new address.

Thanks for any help.

It will be down to negotiations ...

BT will normally allow an upgrade without any penalty for early termination on the existing contract provided the customer agrees to a new 12month for the new service. Don't mention te house move and then when it happens deal with that issue then.

Home Move is not an issue, just done it myself a few weeks ago and BT have migrated over my services for free provided I entered another 12 month contact (which I did).

I would just get the package upgraded for peace of mind and enter a new contract.

If they are outside of their contract they could switch providers as well.

In reply to a post by MHC:

It will be down to negotiations ...

BT will normally allow an upgrade without any penalty for early termination on the existing contract provided the customer agrees to a new 12month for the new service. Don't mention te house move and then when it happens deal with that issue then.

Pretty sure they are now out of contract for their Infinity broadband service anyway, though they paid a year's line rental in advance via Line Rental Saver (LRS) which still has many months to run.

The issue is whether it's possible to negotiate away the excess charges - at £1.80 per Gigabyte! - they have notched up this month, as part of the process of upgrading to an unlimited plan. I hope so... I wonder if it might be better to try calling up the UK based customer relations team rather than going through web chat.

I did try and get them to upgrade to an unlimited Infinity plan and hence new contract when they paid their year's LRS but to no avail. Usage capped home broadband is playing with fire!

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Home Move is not an issue, just done it myself a few weeks ago and BT have migrated over my services for free provided I entered another 12 month contact (which I did).

I would just get the package upgraded for peace of mind and enter a new contract.

If they are outside of their contract they could switch providers as well.

Thanks for the reassurance re Home Move and BT.

To be honest I think (like many others) they've paid over the odds over the years for the telecoms services, and my thinking was that I was going to encourage them to take up one of the new customer offers (from BT or someone else) when they move into the new place, to try and tip the balance back in their favour. However that will obviously have to wait!

They are out of contract for their broadband, but have paid Line Rental Saver with many months still to run so are kinda tied to BT. I did look yesterday at how long it would take to migrate the broadband only over to Plusnet, and going through the order process the earliest date offered was 1 December... by which time they will have racked up yet more excess charges for going over their monthly GB allowance this November!

So I think it's a case of them staying with BT and bumping it up to an unlimited package... I will see what can be done today, hopefully they'll be able to quash the excess charges as part of the upgrade sales process.

I did my home move all online this time around, did not speak to anybody.

https://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/home...

Overall if there is an active line at the new home it is a free home-move, if not they ask for 129 pound but you can (and I have in the past) negotiate this with customer retention's on the phone.

It might be worth calling through to BT retention's to ask for a better deal.

Usually given a get out of jail free card the first month this happens, and the tracking is not always 100% accurate.

Agreeing to upgrade to unlimited and new 12 month contract will often see charges forgotten.

90GB Infinity allowance is an odd figure though, never recall that in our listings, so possible they were already on a 'special' deal if BT play hard ball

Perhaps my negotiation skills were not as good as I thought. Two thirds of the way through my 1 year 40G limit with BT I tried to upgrade to unlimited and told the Agent I was prepared to commit for a further year for a "deal". No,they said, they wanted full list price. I waited until the end of the year and out of contact suddenly a good deal for unlimited was available.
Currently my line rental saver is out of sync with my broadband contact. I am going to pay full list price on line rental for 2 months to sync it with the broadband. Then I will call BT to see what is on offer for phone and broadband. I reckon my leverage is greatest that way.

Edited by treforh (Fri 18-Nov-16 10:35:50)

I have just discovered that my wi-fi usage has shot up by an additional 140GB per month (usually around 15GB per month) and realised that it is down to changing to using a new podcast app on my mobile phone which I suspect is re-downloading *every* podcast again overnight while the phone is charging (I have now turned off auto-downloading as a check).

Could be something like this which is boosting the additional usage in your case? Fortunately I am on an unlimited package so not the issue for me it may be for those on a capped package.

Once you start streaming iPlayer etc, it is very easy to clock up usage figures like that.