10Gb monthly usage limit - install a third party m...

Question

Hi,
I was forced to change over to BT back in January after having been with Tiscali Unlimited for over 5 years (who were never great but were taken over by the dreaded TalkTalk - who promised they weren't going to increase subscription rates and then promptly increased subscription rates by almost 33%! unless you gave in to blackmail and gave them your phone calls as well - and I never respond well to that kind of strong arm bullying). (As I understand it there was a mass exodus away from TalkTalk)
My rural exchange is not unbundled, which means that every supplier but BT (and previously Tiscali), adds a whacking great surcharge because the service is "out of area".  When I wanted to get shut of Tiscali it turned into quite a long convoluted nightmare trying to find a reasonably priced ISP, I had to settle for the BT 10Gb a month thing, not ideal but, any port in a storm...
Anyway, I just received a warning email from BT saying I have used over 7Gb in May (?) and if I go over I'll be charged £1 per Gb.  The email is pretty vague, and when I go looking on the website for concrete information, I'm really struggling to find anything in the sprawling mess.  I couldn't find when my month starts and ends??, couldn't find anything relating to actual usage of BB, and am told by BT I should install a third party meter to keep track - that I may want to "try a few" before I settle on one.
Back in Jan, when I signed up to BT, I went to the BTYahoo site to set up some email addresses, in doing so I got a trojan attack which was picked up by my antivirus, then every time I visited BTYahoo I get reinfected.  It turned out that parts of this 'third party' site where I am forced to go to set up my emails, are poxed up with the GoogleRedirect virus, and once you're infected you're in real trouble and I had no end of problems after that.  
To cut a long story short, I reported all this to BT who never even replied! A delightful welcome to BT Broadband. 
I am always staggered by how lax the internet 'cess-pit' is and people are too trusting, if you download and install ANY .exe file onto your computer, you have no way of knowing what it's really up to, in other words it could easily be keeping track of your movements, sucking data out, putting data in, accessing files, etc etc., the possibilities are both easy and endless if you know what you're doing.  It is difficult enough trying to keep yourself secure on the net without being told by your ISP to download who knows what into your computer for something they should be providing as a matter of course as they are already collecting the figures???  It's ridiculous, if you are going to impose a usage limit then you should make the figures readily accessible by the user, there's no excuse.  How else is the customer expected to keep track and modify usage accordingly??
Can anyone tell me please - is it possible to access your usage figures? and if so how? - how do you find out when your 'usage' period begins and ends?  and exactly what is the period - is it 28 days? per calendar month?
Any concrete info gratefully received as I'm about ready to blow a gasket!

Answer 1

Andy_N wrote:
DS wrote:
There has been a "system error" with Business Broadband Fibre customers. They received a 10Gb excess usage charges notification incorrectly. I posted about it here. I presume this didn't also happen to any residential fibre customers.
In addition as I mentioned elsewhere, a "residential" user has reported receiving the 100GB FUP email by error and was informed to just delete that email.
Hi Andy. I didn't know that the residential email was by error and was informed to just delete it
I 100% agree though- "Why don't the support people actually explain the cause ?"
Makes you wonder      if any customers get/got this email and wasn't told to just delete it and were then capped.
edit - corrected as I misread your last post
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