Telenet consumer malpractice
14 12 2007[update] Turns out it isn’t quite as bad as I thought — the pay as you go is 0,26 Eurocent or 0,0026 Euro vs 0,00099 Euro buying the extra monthly blocks. Still wish Telenet had better package options and did something about those ridiculous download limits.
Telenet is one of a few broadband internet providers here in Belgium and as such have been a customer of theirs for several years. One of the painful facts of life is that we have to deal with monthly download/upload limits and have our upload speed capped at 256Kb.
Your monthly limit depends on the package you’ve chosen and goes from a mere 400Mb for BasicNet (20 Euro/month or some 30 USD) to TurboNet at 35GB (61,32 Euro/month or 90 USD). I’ve got the ExpressNet package which means a 12GB limit at 42,92 Euro/month (63 USD).
So far so good, this month I’ve had the first occurrence where I went over the limit and they give you three options:
- continue surfing at slower speed
Seems like a pretty good option but in practice this at best reaches 5kb/s and wouldn’t even allow me to retrieve my email without it timing out.
- pay as you go
This option allows you to continue surfing at full speed and you’ll be charged for your additional bandwidth
- increase your monthly download limit
With this option you can choose to add from 1 up to 95GB of extra download allowance charged monthly
Having tried the first option which was unworkable, I chose to try pay as you go — we’re half way through the month anyway, right? Now for the interesting bit, sure I expected pay as you go to be slightly more expensive than buying an extra download block but lets do a little math:
Pay as you go is charged at 0,26 Euro/MB (or 0,38 USD), in the day or so that I had this option turned on I used up 119MB which comes down to a whopping 30,94 Euro practically doubling my monthly fee. Going for option three costs you 1,02 Euro/GB (or 1,49 USD).
1,02 Euro / 1024 MB = 0,00099 Euro/MB vs 0,26 Euro/MB with pay as you go
If my math is correct what this boils down to is one option is 26100% more expensive than the other.
While it may be unethical what bothers me most is that these three options are presented as if they are equal and an unsuspecting consumer is faced with a ludicrous bill at the end of the month.
Just to illustrate, the 5GB extra monthly allowance that I ended up taking cost me 5 Euro whereas it would have been 1331 Euro (5 x 1024MB x 0,26 Euro) using pay as you go.
The whole thing seems so extreme that I hope I’m making some sort of obvious mistake in my reasoning here. If not, I definitely won’t leave it at this. Test Aankoop, are you reading this?
http://telenet.be/423/0/1/nl/thuis/internet/tarieven/diensten-opties.html
Peter,
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your reasoning. I had a similar experience with Belgacom with my HSDPA connection I used to have. After I capped my limit ($60 for 2GB) they switched my plan to pay as you go (0.x/MB) without a warning!
The modem software should have shown a warning and it didn’t, it should have displayed the bandwidth consumption but it didn’t …. When I called the helpdesk they said “You shouldn’t trust our software because this is brand new technology” ?!
Peter,
As i am completly disappointed in telenet’s last campagne wich seemed promosing (the false press reports got my heart beaten double for a few minutes).
anyway i share your thoughts, in fact not only telenet but all the big broadband players are a joke.
but i think you made a mistake about the 0,26euro/mb .. its listed on the site as 0,26 euroCENT .. i have been prompted numoures times with that screen of doom when my limit is reached. wich would made sense if you took your picture with it 119 * 0,0026euro/mb is a cost of 0,26euro .. wich is 2,6euro/GB ..
greetings
you’re right Andy, noticed it earlier today — have updated the post. I really hope we’ll see unlimited (or at least fair use policy) download limits in my lifetime
Hi,
If you are unhappy with the way Telenet is doing business maybe you can have a look at http://www.tik.be . It is a “VZW” to represent Telecom users in Belgium. On the forum there is also a little tip to have FUP
Greetings,
Thomas