Cost of Extra Usage Allowance

A few years ago, when Zen was offering about 20GB of data usage per month; it cost £1 per GB to buy extra data allowance if it was needed. This seemed a fair amount to pay when 20GB was what you got for £20 per month.

However, nowadays when 200GB is allowed for Zen Pro for £35 per month, and this is eaten up at an alarming rate by Netflix, BBC iPlayer and other digital download services; the price of 1GB of extra allowance is still £1.

This makes the purchase of extra data allowance disproportionately expensive compared to the regular package. Are there any plans to make this charge a little more reasonable? For example 10GB for an extra £1 (50GB for £5) would be a reasonable amount to pay.

Ideas, Discussion?

Thanks
NigelS

It is more expensive to top up your allowance but I believe this is because Zen purchase DSL transfer (from their network to your home or business connection) in bulk from BT each month based on a projection of what their body of customers will use based on the packages they are on.

When you top up they have to purchase additional transfer from BT which maybe charged slightly higher and they do of course have to make a profit on it.

Another thing to factor in here is the additional charges they may have to pay to their transit providers.

This is a complete guess and I'm sure someone from Zen will be along to explain.

I upped my package from Lite to Active this month for this reason as it was cheaper to commit to the additional transfer than to buy it on a prepaid basis.

So in a nutshell I think not

Edited by techguy (Sun 02-Sep-12 18:59:10)

In reply to a post by nrms:

A few years ago, when Zen was offering about 20GB of data usage per month; it cost £1 per GB to buy extra data allowance if it was needed. This seemed a fair amount to pay when 20GB was what you got for £20 per month.

However, nowadays when 200GB is allowed for Zen Pro for £35 per month, and this is eaten up at an alarming rate by Netflix, BBC iPlayer and other digital download services; the price of 1GB of extra allowance is still £1.

This makes the purchase of extra data allowance disproportionately expensive compared to the regular package. Are there any plans to make this charge a little more reasonable? For example 10GB for an extra £1 (50GB for £5) would be a reasonable amount to pay.

Ideas, Discussion?

Thanks
NigelS

By your 'Pound per GB being fair' rule of thumb, don't you think 200GB for £35 is disproportionately inexpensive?
I am happy with an ISP that gives me only 40GB allowance ...BUT un-metered between between 7.00 pm and 7.00 am AND all weekend, for not much more than half of £35. Very Netflix and iPlayer friendly.

It's £1.50/GB for those who joined Zen in more recent years.

In reply to a post by professor973:

In reply to a post by nrms:

A few years ago, when Zen was offering about 20GB of data usage per month; it cost £1 per GB to buy extra data allowance if it was needed. This seemed a fair amount to pay when 20GB was what you got for £20 per month.

However, nowadays when 200GB is allowed for Zen Pro for £35 per month, and this is eaten up at an alarming rate by Netflix, BBC iPlayer and other digital download services; the price of 1GB of extra allowance is still £1.

This makes the purchase of extra data allowance disproportionately expensive compared to the regular package. Are there any plans to make this charge a little more reasonable? For example 10GB for an extra £1 (50GB for £5) would be a reasonable amount to pay.

Ideas, Discussion?

Thanks
NigelS

By your 'Pound per GB being fair' rule of thumb, don't you think 200GB for £35 is disproportionately inexpensive?
I am happy with an ISP that gives me only 40GB allowance ...BUT un-metered between between 7.00 pm and 7.00 am AND all weekend, for not much more than half of £35. Very Netflix and iPlayer friendly.

Bear in mind also that Zen is predominantly a business ISP so will also be priced to deter the heavy downloaders as a responsive uncongested network is important to business users for work tasks.

If Zen did start to target the consumer market I personally would jump ship as the network would become congested and traffic management would soon follow.

You get what you pay for, horses for courses etc.

Edited by techguy (Mon 03-Sep-12 17:15:23)

I just have Business phone with Zen for really cheap calls. I put my BB with Freeola with a view to switching to Zen BB if things didn't work out. It is only two or three months in, but so far everything is tickety-boo, with CS replying to tickets in around 10 minutes. Not that there has been a problem, just a few newbie Freeola questions.

Edited by professor973 (Mon 03-Sep-12 18:54:41)

In reply to a post by professor973:

I just have Business phone with Zen for really cheap calls. I put my BB with Freeola with a view to switching to Zen BB if things didn't work out. It is only two or three months in, but so far everything is tickety-boo, with CS replying to tickets in around 10 minutes. Not that there has been a problem, just a few newbie Freeola questions.

Thats good if it does what you need