Jason said at December 28th, 2007 at 5:48pm

Sounds like you need to change your ISP, or at least threaten to do so. They’ll either back down or you can choose an ISP with less draconian policies.

I’d recommend UKOnline or Be. Both probably much faster than Demon who max out at 8mbit (and aren’t unbundled, hence have to use BT’s rubbish network?).

Adam Bowie said at December 28th, 2007 at 6:03pm

I can’t disagree with your thoughts and conclusions about Demon, although perhaps your real beef should surely be with Apple for letting its buggy iTunes software so disastrously eat your bandwidth.

Isn’t this the sort of thing that Americans launch class action lawsuits about?

Nick Piggott said at December 28th, 2007 at 8:00pm

I agree with Adam. Apple/iTunes (Joost, Skype - name your app) operate on the basis that “bandwidth is free”, and that that allows them to be careless with their applications. You bear the brunt of the problem, not them.

Imagine what would have happened in this situation if you’d been
a) a “Normal” user
b) who took up one of those lovely pink USB modems that “3″ have been touting about with a 1GByte a month limit
c) and had to pay 10p per Mbyte in excess of the 1GByte limit.

Moan at Apple - suggest that they pay for you to have an alternate DSL link for a month. Or pay for you to have a 3G HSPDA modem with 80GByte downloads for a month.

steve martin said at December 28th, 2007 at 9:31pm

If you’d installed a dodgy boiler that burned excess gas all day you’d have a claim against the manufacturer or the installer, not against your energy supplier. So, theoretically, Adam and Nick are right. However Apple must surely have indemnified itself against such claims
in its terms and conditions.

Meanwhile, 50GB is getting to be a pretty meagre monthly ration. Since starting to use the BBC iPlayer, Miro and various other video-originating services I find my December total is nearly there. Outbound data has shot up too from around 500Meg to 4GB in December.

If Demon throttled back my connection I’d be similarly narked but sadly my negotiating power is somewhat limited by the fact that my broadband is paid for by my employer. Aren’t you in the same boat James?

Martin Belam said at December 29th, 2007 at 8:36am

James, you can always cheer yourself up by reflecting that your new slow connection is still 4 times faster than the best speed I can manage at home over here!

Olly said at December 29th, 2007 at 9:55am

Hmm… it’d be interesting to see what the OFT (Office of Fair Trading) made of it.

Whilst you have to be reasonable and accept if something needs to be reset it may take overnight, or “the next few days”, a company can’t reasonably hide behind their technology to ration your service for a month. You are paying for a service, they have to provide it, regardless of the technology they use. Especially as it is, surely, just a number in a database somewhere and not a physical alteration needed.

You could try dropping them an ever so polite email explaining you’ll be contacting the OFT explaining the situation and seeing what they make of the inability to override technology for over a month. Especially as cases like this are likely to become more commonplace.

Olly

Porphyro said at December 30th, 2007 at 2:45am

Demon took exactly the same ‘corrective action’ against me tonight, for going 1gb over their acceptable limit. Accordingly, after 5 years as one of their customers, they’ve lost my business to be.com.

Phil Edmonds said at January 2nd, 2008 at 1:36pm

I use Zen Internet’s capped products at a number of sites. If you hit the limit they ‘pull the plug’ until you purchase extra GBs (unless you’ve already got purchased in advance of course.)

Of course it depends on what you are using the connection for - but from running a business point of view I’d much rather have the option of paying a little extra when needed than have the connection speed throttled.

Alan Phillips said at January 3rd, 2008 at 11:07pm

Like Phil, I’m a Zen customer. I’m very pleased with their service. Zen is, it seems, more than just a way of life.

Steve Wyatt said at January 7th, 2008 at 11:55pm

Simple. Go with BeThere. 24 meg genuinely unlimited with static IP for £18 per month. I’m 500m from the exchange and get 21meg downstream…..

Ian Forrester said at January 8th, 2008 at 2:15am

Change ISP thats what I did - http://www.cubicgarden.com/blojsom/blog/cubicgarden/technology/mobile+technology/2007/03/27/When-Unlimited-does-not-mean-unlimited.html

Paul Con said at January 10th, 2008 at 3:51pm

I’m seething..
My bandwidth has been restricted to 128k, did Demon inform me, NO. I thought I had a fault on the line so called technical support to find out the above. I work from home and log into a corporate network via a VPN. 128k is nowhere near enough for me to do this so I now have to drive 120 miles round trip to work from the nearest office. Do Demon care? not at all. I called customer support to negotiate lifting my punishment but they would not listen. I threatened to cancel the service and was kindly informed by the customer services operative that they can do this for me now if I like!!!! unbelievable. I’ve been with Demon for 9 years and have had this service for 4 years. I now find myself looking for a new service provider, shame as I’ve had excellent service up till now…..

Dan said at January 16th, 2008 at 2:33pm

Demon has a long history of poor service; I’m surprised to read of tech-savvy users using them.

I’d recommend Plusnet, who are fully up-front about what you’re buying with their packages, and have excellent UK-based customer service.

Andy said at February 21st, 2008 at 8:56pm

At the end of the day Demon are one of the best ISPs around, Zen seem to be THE best at the moment. I have used Demon through business and a few months ago switched from Pipex to them at home as well and have no problems. As with everything in life you get what you pay for, if you go for the cheaper “home user” packages there WILL be a FUP on it, and if you break the rules you will be punished in some way. Its your responsibility to know what your doing on your pc, the fact you “accidently” downloaded 72gb is no excuse, most people would notice the speeds slow down while on the net and find out what the cause is.

Kristof said at March 9th, 2008 at 11:54am

I have been with Demon for the past 4 years now. I have never ever received any emails from them, and always thought their service was excellent. Just last week, I have been getting emails from them regarding the FUP. As I have 2 kids at home with their own PC’s. Xbox360 and PS3 in the house, which all go online. I am in disbelieve that Demon are now spamming me every single day telling me that I am going over their FUP and getting sick and tired of it. I want to change to the O2 ISP, but they are not active in my area yet. So I am now looking for another ISP, as Demon has seriously ticked me off the wrong way..

John Browning said at April 15th, 2008 at 8:52pm

Hi everbody

I have experienced no real technical difficulties but only enjoy 50% advertised download speed cant get an answer they all blame each other but generally OK. The big drama is the customer service is so atrocious that after five months of calls incoorect bills incorrect statements payments not matched credits to someone else credit card all manner of abortions no complaint was answered in any manner close to acceptable I once recieved a letter compelling me to use direct debit. If they cant even manage paper billing Hell will freeze over before they get my bank account details. So I urge every user to request there mac code and change ISP as soon as possible

Richard said at April 25th, 2008 at 7:15pm

Have used Demon for the past 2 years. Year 1 was excellent. Made the mistake of accepting a new contract which reduced my monthly broadband bill by £1.0 per month but I expect established my account firmly within Demon’s new AUP and their 30 day 50Gb download limit. Occasional use of the BBC’s iPlayer, 40D, Xbox and whole family web browsing soon takes us to the 50Gb limit. With no give or flexibility in the application of their AUP, it’s time for a change of ISP.

steve said at April 29th, 2008 at 4:36pm

John Browning has the best advice regarding this abysmal isp: get the mac code and move.

Schalk Munnik said at August 6th, 2008 at 8:58am

We cancelled our company broadband with Demon in October 2007 and they have continued to bill us to-date. We have chased them for the past couple of months with no results. Any company that is considering them should take note that their billing and customer service is absolutely appalling.

Phil Bacon said at September 1st, 2008 at 4:13pm

My partner has always used apple and has Demon.

She has bought a wifi hub connection from them. The instructions are incomprehensible. Has anyone else had difficulty in connecting a wifi hub from them?

PS I usually manage these things with little difficulty but am not an electronics or IT specialist.

Nick Wickens said at September 14th, 2008 at 9:15am

I have been with Demon for something like 15 years and not had a problem to date until now when a requirement to download a copy of an unsupported OS (AIX 5.1) for work purposes (We had problems with an old system) took me over the 60Gb limit. Now I am getting something like 56Kb although they say its 128Kb. I called customer support and got put through to India and it just went downhill from there as all I got was scripted responses. When I said well I will leave he offered to send me a customer satisfaction survey (which has not arrived).

Seems like Demon lost their way when THUS took them over so if they can’t move with the times then i’ll do the moving.

Demon - Get your act together or you will disappear up your own internet pipe soon.

James Cridland said at October 30th, 2008 at 8:15pm

You might be interested to know that, nearly a year later, I’ve just given Demon their marching orders; and have signed with Be Unlimited. This is mainly because I will doubtless use more bandwidth in the future (particularly with the iPlayer) but also because Be Unlimited offer me 24 meg, and I’ve had a few good reports from local friends.

In their customer survey, I’ve linked here on a number of occasions to tell them why I’m leaving.

Dan H said at November 28th, 2008 at 7:18pm

Lucky you, you get a warning every time you go over.

i do a lot of beta testing, downloading large applications and i am a fan of linux so i tend to download a load of different Distro’s of linux when their available.
(my hobby)

and ive been capped 3 times… all without warning, and i get a maximum download speed of about 15kbs when trying to download new distros and stuff.

Demon support are useless, the first time this happened they had bt doing tests and all sorts of stuff. eventually 3 weeks later they realised i was capped.

Im going to Bethere.co.uk now…

just thought i’d rant about it first.

NB said at December 4th, 2008 at 9:01pm

I pay 22 quid for demon every month and they have now capped me twice, I shall be leaving them in Febuary when my year runs out.

I can’t wait

Str3am said at December 23rd, 2008 at 7:21pm

I’ve been reading the comments and now having had 3 warning emails over the last 3 days about my usage (each one the usage has lowered) am looking at two possible replacement isp’s.

As this will be the first time I have had to call up and cancel a broadband service and get a mac code, could someone tell me the sort of responses or things I can expect from the person I unfortunately get put through to.

Wish I didn’t have too call them to get it done, was bad when I orignally called to use them.

Thanks in advance

cattanach said at December 27th, 2008 at 10:32am

I too,am getting Demon emails on both my office and home .That means I am paying £ 20.00 per month on each system using the same emailnadress. £40 a month is too much for this hassle. Having been with them for 9 years,this is new and obviously orchestrated by THUS. Problem is I have Mac at home and Windows in Office. What is the best suggestion on what to do please.

cattanach said at December 27th, 2008 at 10:44am

forgot to tick box for email responses !!

James Cridland said at December 27th, 2008 at 12:33pm

These days, you don’t need to worry about Mac vs PC - your (new) wireless router from your replacement ISP will just work fine, and will have instructions for both.

cattanach said at December 27th, 2008 at 12:48pm

read a blog which said that my unsecured router which is netgear could be hijacked to download vast amounts. How do I make my old netgear secure. I have lost all the supporting docs.