Tech Support HELL

I'm in the US. I did 40GB last month.

From:

claidheamhmor

I'm envious. That would cost me $240/month. And, of course, only be at our 384Kbps speeds (we do have higher speeds, but at much higher costs).

Edited Date: 2008-09-17 04:39 pm (UTC)

From:

xforge.livejournal.com

"You're not paying? Okay, hope you can do business without network connectivity **NYOINK** KZZT have a nice day!!"

From:

egearman.livejournal.com

Exactly. There should be a contract in place.

Worst case, their lawyers and your lawyers hash something out (they get paid, you don't, which is why it's worst case) and they end up upgrading their plan in addition to monitoring their usage.

But that's what would happen in a reasonable world...

From:

jjjiii

Here's something I don't understand:

How I could just kill a man!

From:

bekscilla.livejournal.com

"if they'd bothered to do their homework." = by which you mean "read the emails that get sent to the main email account"?

From:

Out of curiosity - do you provide bandwidth usage measuring tools to these businesses?

I ask because Comcast is apparently implementing bandwidth caps and exceeding them can cause your account to be immediately suspended. Comcast doesn't provide such tools. If you ask customer service, they tell you to look into one of the available third-party options.

From:

Yeah, it's sucky, which is why I threw Tomato firmware on my WRT54G (It has pretty graphs!), just in case TimeWarner starts doing the same thing.

Comcast's cap is 250GB, IIRC.

My monthly usage is in the 40GB - 50GB range.

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I'm somewhat concerned because both I and my wife work from home - she every day, and me one to two days a week. I'm an ETL data analyst and my job is loading massive data files into databases. Usually these don't touch my computer, but sometimes if something is broken in our automated sftp processes, I have to pull it down manually and then copy it over to a staging server. Hasn't happened at home yet, thank god, but it happens every week or two at work and so the potential is definitely there.

By "massive data files" we're talking anywhere from 200mb to 15gb, compressed.

This doesn't even begin to touch any legit video streaming we do, downloading game update files (we both play MMORPGs, and WoW has a huge pre-expansion content patch coming down in the next month or so), purchasing software and media files via direct download, or any of the hundreds of work documents she routinely sends back and forth every month via email.

So no, I don't expect my usage to break 250gb every month, but I see it as a definite and realistic possibility upon occasion, and thus this really really bothers me.

I've got bandwidth usage software on both of my personal machines, which is a completely non-optimal solution since it counts bandwidth spent on the local network which doesn't touch the cable modem, nor does it count usage by my wife. I'm pretty much paranoid of reflashing my router because I assume the worst routinely and don't care to spend $50 replacing it.

Yet another bullet item in a long list of reasons I hate Comcast. We specifically went with Adelphia when we moved into this house because it was the only non-Comcast cable option. Comcast bought Adelphia. Assholes.

From:

My wife and I both work from home too.

I generally don't push that much up, but it's not unusual for us to suck DVD images down.

If you worry about breaking it, then you might want to buy up to the business level (especially if you get reimbursed for it).

I actually have 2 routers, same model. I use one for the new version of firmware and swap them out - that way I don't lose internet while messing with it, and if I brick it I can put it away and come back to it.

From:

Yeah. We'd really love to be reimbursed for it. My company won't do it because working from home is a perk and a luxury savagely fought over, and her company won't do it because we had the service for our own personal use before she started working there, and continue to use it for non-business purposes.

From:

hisamishness.livejournal.com

I need to look into a monitor for mine. (Un?)fortunately, our house internet runs through a Cisco 2600 series router. There should be some sort of reporting I can pull up through that.

yeah... more 'learning & doing' to distract me from the CCNA books...

From:

I dont think US broadband users realise how lucky they have it :) Here, high-speed high-data business accounts (shdsl and the like) run into the hundreds and hundreds, to thousands, of dollars a month.

Even basic domestic DSL (which does get shaped here - its only business accounts that get data charges cause thats where the money is!) can run to 50-80 bucks a month for DSL2+ unlimited data. And most ISP shape you after 20-40gb or so. 250gb limits are unheard of here.

From:

I don't have much of any problem at all with the point at which the line is drawn - my problem is with the complete lack of ethics surrounding the facts that:

1) Comcast has never notified us of this policy. I found it out on wired or gizmodo or one of those type sites, I forget.

2) The account is advertised and sold as unlimited access.

3) Implementing caps and refusing to allow the customer to know when they approach that cap until after they've exceeded it, at which point you reserve the right to suspend their account immediately for up to twelve months.

I understand that nothing in life is free, even bandwidth. I understand that these costs must be recouped. I understand that US residents do much better than most, if not all, of the rest of the world along these lines.

However, I still feel the three points above to be a tremendously unethical way to go about business. If you're gonna change the rules midway into the game, at least have the balls to say it out loud instead of trying to sneak it past.

From:

Certainly agree with all those points. I especially hate how companies give themselves an out with EULA clauses like "these policies may change at any time without warning".

WTF is the point of a contract with an out like that?

From:

Yeah we have account tools that show you your data daily and make that tool clear to users. Some just dont pay attention. We dont have a "hey you've hit your cap!" alert (which some other ISPs Ive worked for have offered) but even if we did you can bet there'd be at least one *special* customer who ignored all the bells and whistles, got hit with the fees and whinged anyway...

From:

Checking my router...

Last month, I did 40GB.

This month, it looks like it will be more like 45GB.

There is "officially" no cap, but they've started publishing them for other regions - most seem to be in the 200GB - 250GB per month range. After that, they want you to buy their business product.

From:

guinevere33.livejournal.com

My bf and I were talking about this and did the math. Based on our typical upload/download speeds from Comcast, it turns out to be physically impossible for us to go over the cap. Go go "high speed" internet :P

From:

egearman.livejournal.com

Remember, it's speeds "up to"...

From:

We get 15mbps down. We're in a fairly rural area, the lines are only 5 years old, and most people here still use dialup.

From:

the-s-guy.livejournal.com

Of course, it's well-known that people do this kind of thing, to ISPs, phone companies, or anything which provides easy access to horrendously-expensive services.

If it were me, I'd put a user-defined hard dollar cap on such services, so that they could never be charged more than X amount (and also never receive non-free service past that point). But I'm not in management, where the reasoning runs that the hassle is worth it because you might get the occasional customer readily coughing up $20K for a month.

(Well, that and you get equal hassle when someone's service cuts off or gets shaped in the last few days of the month, followed immediately by a max_cap bill.)

Eh, I dunno... maybe something in the contract which offers an option? "If the limit of X gigabytes in a rolling 30-day window is reached, please -

a) Suspend all non-free services temporarily until the window is no longer full;

b) Reduce ("shape") service back to 56kbps for a fixed additional cost of Y;

c) Continue providing full service at the rate of Z dollars per gigabyte up to a maximum of N dollars total."

To be nice, I'd suggest a combination of the three, with service provided to N dollars and then free[1] 56K until the window rolled on sufficiently. Mind you, 56K running 24/7 is still around 18G a month, so you'd have to tweak the numbers to avoid being bankrupted by leechers sucking down cap+200G per year.

[1] "Free" meaning "rolled into the N-dollar cost", of course...

From:

soruk.livejournal.com

That sounds rather like what my ISP does. 60GB over a rolling 30-day window, and while they don't provide measuring tools they email you if you approach it, and if you go over it, while you're over your bandwidth is capped at 128Kbps (and, I think, lower your priority on the network). They don't charge extra. Only downloads are measured.

As soon as your total in the usage window drops below 60GB normal service is resumed.

Despite my relatively heavy use downloading anime fansubs I've never hit the limit.

From:

cthulu-for-pm.livejournal.com

With the plan I'm on, we get 20GB a month, then charged 15 cents a meg for the next two GB, then shaped down to 56k for the rest of the month.

Personally, I'd rather just get shaped once I hit the 20GB point, instead of having up to $300 extra on my bill (which is about *triple* what the normal monthly bill is).

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