Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by citricsquid 5612 days ago
Same here. I'm with BT in the UK and I'm on an unlimited* plan with a fair usage policy. This is fine by me, I held off downloading until night time (for both my own convenience and others) but because I had 2mb/s download and a Steam library of 200+ games, I figured I may as well DL my entire library at once. After a couple of days I'd downloaded over 300GB, one night I get an email saying blah blah fair usage cap has been hit. So now I'm capped at 1mbps between 5PM and midnight every day for 1 month (thankfully the cap is lifted tomorrow) because my "unlimited" plan has hard defined limits that aren't publicised. Try finding the limit for the unlimited plan I have and it doesn't exist, yet EVERYONE gets capped at 300GB/m. In a normal month I use ~150GB and would stick to that if I'd known about the defined limit, the misleading nature of it sucks.

I don't mind limits, unlimited is impossible, but when the limit is the same for everyone regardless of how the service is used and then tout it as unlimited... it's ridiculous.
2 comments
slavak 5612 days ago
Wouldn't that be considered a breach of contract? I know that if this happened to me (Israel) the first thing I would do is call up my ISP and threaten a lawsuit unless they provide me the service I signed up for.
link
jarek 5612 days ago
Some small print in a terms and conditions document probably says something like "we reserve the right to Manage Our Network (read: throttle you) as we see fit." Also "we reserve the right to terminate the contract at any time for any reason."
link
slavak 5612 days ago
This probably depends a great deal on the legal system where you live. Over here there's a decent chance of a "small-print" condition like that being thrown out if it was ever challenged in court. Of course it also helps that usually you sign up with an ISP over the phone, without actually signing any physical contract they can fill with "small-print".
link
ZoFreX 5611 days ago
> unlimited is impossible

Tell that to Virgin. Pay them enough money and they give you real unlimited (as do several other ISPs). BT sucks, but that's pretty widely-known now. The UK is certainly not in the same position as Canada, as we have several options that are genuinely unlimited.

link