Paying about £220 per quarter. Calls are minimal, and I never download. However my son is on Spotify a lot is that a download ? Also BT Openzone keeps overriding our own wireless internet, asking for our password which of course we dont have therefore rendering our computer useless for days on end.
Help.

£220 per quarter

😯

are you on PAYG broadband?

do you get an itemised bill (or could you)?

[edit] Spotify is a download – any streaming media is, really.

How old is your son? Is he calling 'premium' lines?

£220!

I pay line rental and £7.00 a month for Broadband and unlimited calls

You've been, er had in a big way by someone

A lad I'm working with has just had a phone bill this morning for £390. For the month!!!

Turns out his son, who has reached that uncomfortable age where a young mans thoughts wander to the fairer sex, has been phoning Babestation all night. Doubtless while roughing up the prime suspect

£390, thats an expensive ****

All sounds far too complicated for me – there can't be many people who pay much on calls/BB beyond the fixed monthly cost can there?

I know! The young man clearly hasn't thought it through. You could have had an hour with Rooneys hooker for that. And her mate

Paying about £220 per quarter.

Are you the last person in the country on dial-up?

I think binners it talking sense on this one…… 😉

You could have had an hour with Rooneys hooker for that.

Maybe this is the deal that should be made? 'Son if you stop using the phone I'll make sure you get laid once a month.'

He has no access to the phone and the computer is in our kitchen. I am paying for over use it seems. My lad has Spotify running when he is doing other things on the computer I.e homework or Facebook.

I bet you have a 1GB download limit. Each song streamed(downloaded) will be about 5MB so he's listened to a lot of songs..

What does an itemised bill cost? A couple of quid? Easily worth it to see why you're getting insane phone bills.

I would speak to them as BT lowest tarrif is 10GB per month. Not sure if they charge per byte after that limit or just cut you off.

If thats the case ask to upgrade for a few quid extra a month.

I bet the cost is down to phone calls to mobiles though – any family been abroad over summer etc?

Taken from BT – here

If you exceed your monthly usage allowance your service won't stop working; advisory emails will be sent to your BT primary email address if you reach 80 per cent of your usage allowance each month and further notification if you then exceed your allowance in a particular month.

If you exceed your usage allowance for two months in a row, we'll charge you £1 for each extra GB you use (rounded up to the nearest GB) starting from the second month you exceed your allowance. We'll continue charging if you keep exceeding your allowance in the following months. These charges will appear on your BT bill.

From 1st November 2010, if you exceed your usage allowance, you'll be charged for additional usage in units of up to 5 gigabytes (GB), at a charge of £5 per 5GB. Charges will apply from the second month you exceed your allowance and in any subsequent month that the usage allowance is exceeded. These charges will appear on your BT bill. To contact us about these changes visit

Here we go.
Unlimited anytime plan £53.32
BT Total broadband £47.97
Both charged in advance 8/9 – 7/12

Phone usage £23.04
Broadband Usage £37.00
Processing payment £4.50
One off charge £36.87?

Extra broadband usage
1/6 – 30/6 10gb £10
8/6 12gb £12
1/7 – 31/7 6gb £6
1/8 – 31/8 9gb £9
We've never received notice that we were reaching our monthly usage quota.

One off charge £36.87?

I'd query what that's for.

You're paying £16/month for broadband, then an extra £12/m on top of that of that for downloads of several Gb over your existing plan. My guess is he's torrenting TV series and films. Or pron.

Spotify is data, what else would it be?

You either need to tell him to knock it off, or change to some form of unlimited plan. Personally, I'd tell BT to roll it tightly and grease it lightly, and look for an LLU provider (stick your details into http://www.samknows.com).

Also, you have an unlimited anytime plan, your phone usage is "minimal", and you've got 23 quid in non-inclusive phone calls. Hm?

Spotify runs for hours on end in our house and my combined phone/broadband bill is never more than £35/month.

ou're paying £16/month for broadband, then an extra £12/m on top of that of that for downloads of several Gb over your existing plan. My guess is he's torrenting TV series and films. Or pron.

Not sure how much you get per month with BT, but as a guide our household uses around 10gig a month- almost continuous internet radio, a bit of iplayer, spotify etc and lots of browsing youtube etc.
So either you're on a pitiful allowance or he is downloading stuff over torrents as suggested above.
Have a look at plusnet. I pay £11.49 for £60gig a month, and they don't count overnight usage, so he can download as much "stuff" as he likes then

Up to 20Mb PlusNet broadband from only £5.99 a month!

Cougar
Mobiles aren't included that's £14.75 the rest is £0.71 for call back and £7.57 'other calls'

Whatever it's clearly not suiting the household.

Docrobster, 10G just checked.

are you on direct debit and they're taking out way more than you are using ? they're ****s for pulling that trick, took quite a large amount off us over the course of last year.

Spotify won't be the problem for the increase in costs as you don't actually down-load the songs, you only listen online. I have Spotify Premium on a lot, while my 13 year old daughter has the free version on constantly – the bill for the last quater arrived last week…..£116.

you don't actually down-load the songs

well, you do but you just don't save them locally.

oldgit

Get them to split the bill, phone you pay and broadband your company can pay – then go for whatever package suits.

Also, do you have cable at home? The standard Virgin package covers everything we do and the internet/XBox is on somewhere all the time in our house.

well, you do but you just don't save them locally.

Yes you do, for your use next time or anyone else.

Why on earth would anyone NOT have a broadband deal from a provider like Virgin where you pay a fixed sum per month with unlimited use?

Yes, you can download them to listen off line, but that doesn't cost, if you buy the track to play it on an MP3 player or to burn to disc then you do. If you are exceeding your download limit and having to pay, then that is different.

wind-bag – anything that finds its way to your pc so you can listen to it has been downloaded, whether you have it available for future use or not. It may be compressed for 'listen only' but it still counts…

Spotify won't be the problem for the increase in costs as you don't actually down-load the songs, you only listen online. I have Spotify Premium on a lot, while my 13 year old daughter has the free version on constantly – the bill for the last quater arrived last week…..£116.

oh the nieve ity

how do you think you listen to them – by recieving the streaming data ….

but as others said – torrents or something along those lines – spotify doesnt use "that" much data -12GB of music in one day ! **** off

wwaswas – that is right, but from the way oldgit started the thread I was under the impression that he felt he was paying for the download, in addition to his download limit.

Is your wireless router properly secured – with WPA rather than WEP?

If the lad were downloading films an the like, he'd also have to be watching them in the kitchen.

I can't help but wonder if half your street isn't using your broadband 😆

Spotify won't be the problem for the increase in costs as you don't actually down-load the songs,

By that logic, my phone bill should be free, as the people I talk to don't actually record the calls.

You're not paying to "download", you're paying to receive and transmit data. Whether you save the music to disk or not is irrelevant, it's still data transmission. Uplug your router and see how long Spotify carries on going.

Is your wireless router properly secured – with WPA rather than WEP?

Good point. Also, is your PC mysteriously slow? Could be a virus or other malware.

My money's still on your lad torrenting Big 'n' Juicy vol 1-12 though.

You really need a new broadband and phone deal. Check SamKnows as above but you should be able to get fast, "unlimited" broadband and a load of inclusive phone for less than £25 per month. (I'm with O2 and i think it's 22.50).

They all still have a fair use policy but Spotify is not that bandwidth heavy – the high quality streams are 320kbps and theres a lot of hours of listening to hit the volumes you're talking about. Is he really listening all day every day?

I suspect some video as well – some big film downloads could be some gb each

Has he got an Xbox / PS3? Game demos on my Xbox can routinely exceed 1Gb in size.

I have just left BT due to having 3 phone calls on my last bill.
The first call was made when i was working away in spain, 2nd too were both made on a day when i was at work, i don't even have a phone in my house. I have asked Bt to explain them twice but so far no answer.

He has PS3, but we watch him to see what he's up to.

I do get warnings something about cross network?
And we often loose everything when BT Openzone overrides our own BT Homehub, I have to call India most months to have it reset. But this BT Openzone will somtimes override my HTC HD2 phones network?
Anything here I should be looking at?

From what you just wrote, it sounds like you have an Openzone network near your own. Are you sire that your network is secured against outside use? Could be that other folk are doing a search, finding yours and just using that instezad.

Don't forgot people that this bill is for a quarter not a month although its still very high !
I know BT have made some changes to the why they bill me for my calls and broadband which might explain the one off charge – not sure.
As for the Openzone connection, this runs off your router as a separate connection. You need to go into your setting and try removing it from the list of your networks to connect to. That should stop it switching.
I think my quarterly bill was just over £100. I use around 10Gb per month.
You need to learn how to swap the wireless connection back – its very straight forward and should take you all of 30 seconds not days on the phone to India.