ARGH!! Sticker shock!
Normally, I would jsut complain about something this in muted mutters under my breath. But frankly this is so outrageous I can’t even see straight at the moment.
I have internet access through my local cable company (TelstraClear for those in NZ). They have a monthly transfer limit of 10GB/month - with a charge of 0.20/MB after you hit the cap. The rate itself is obscene. but not much of a worry most of the time, since when you go over you pretty drastically curtail your usage.
Unfortunately, since TelstraClear chose to de-peer from the local exchanges, all local traffic has essentially become international traffic. The result when I spent last month downloading various Ubuntu ISOs without seeing the single warning email - $800 for 4GB of traffic.
The thing that really burns me is that the difference between their 10GB and 20GB plans is $20. They could have cut me off, throttled my connection, upsold me to the 20GB plan, or called, or sent a letter, or *something*.
Even better - because I called about the caps when I first broke them (by 100MB) back in November, they say they can’t do anything about the bill. So no warning and no mercy.
I’ll complain to Commerce Commission when their office opens in the morning, but damn am I angry right now.
May 15th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
Welcome to the real world.
Have you check that TelstraClear has still feet on the ground in NZ? They may have outsourced all their ops in the Philipines or something
May 16th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Take them to disputes tribunal. I did and they settled.