[TelstraClear] TCL: Why do you need to 'steal' from my monthly data allocation?

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › [TelstraClear] TCL: Why do you need to 'steal' from my monthly data allocation?

maro

23 posts

Geek

#76450 2-Feb-2011 15:24

Well, the crappy usage meter of TCL has done it again: By failing to provide reasonbly accurate readings some usage from the old billing period (which had it's last day yesterday) got lumped into the new billing period which leads to a situation where I feel being "cheated".

Yesterday evening (i.e. at '01-Feb-2011 17:15') was the last reading of the old billing period and then nothing else for the next 8h. At midnight the new billing period starts and the usage which pretty much all happend before 8 p.m. yesterday gets thrown in with a timestamp of '02-Feb-2011 01:15'. That means that a certain amount of my allowance for this month (i.e. a bit over 2%) just "disappeared" into nowhere.

Now, the amount is not as much as has happened on earlier occasions, but every time again I'm getting upset. AFAIK I'm not paying 95-98% of my monthly charges, but I regularly only getting that much service (for 100% payment). Makes me wonder whether this is legal.

Nety

2584 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#434321 2-Feb-2011 15:52

Does it happen every month? If so then I can't really see the issue. It just means that effectively the changeover for the next month happens at ~17:00 not midnight. You still get a full month to use the data it just starts and ends a few hours earlier.
On the other hand if it does vary at what time it switches over it makes it more annoying however even then I cannot see how it mean the service has "disappeared" It was still there, you could have used every last bit of it if you had wanted. You just needed to not wait till the last few hours in your cycle to do so.
Personally I have never experienced this problem because if I am getting close to my allocation I do so before the end of the cycle and then use the bare minimum for the remainder of the month.

Media centre PC - Case Silverstone LC16M with 2 X 80mm AcoustiFan DustPROOF, MOBO Gigabyte MA785GT-UD3H, CPU AMD X2 240 under volted, RAM 4 Gig DDR3 1033, HDD 120Gig System/512Gig data, Tuners 2 X Hauppauge HVR-3000, 1 X HVR-2200, Video Palit GT 220, Sound Realtek 886A HD (onboard), Optical LiteOn DH-401S Blue-ray using TotalMedia Theatre Power Corsair VX Series, 450W ATX PSU OS Windows 7 x64

TelstraClear

566 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

TelstraClear

#434325 2-Feb-2011 15:54

Please chat with one of our online reps - they'll be able to have a look at your account and clarify any concerns you have https://clearnet.custhelp.com/app/chat/chat_launch

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
79250 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#434346 2-Feb-2011 16:28

maro: ... I regularly only getting that much service (for 100% payment). Makes me wonder whether this is legal.

As Nety said, if it happens every month, then you are not losing anything really... It gets rolled out to the next month, and so on every month...

maro

23 posts

Geek

#434369 2-Feb-2011 17:02

@Nety: No it does not happen every month, and if it happens it is not at the same time. So it's not a case that I could savely move my own (mental) cut-off point by a few hours. One issue for me is that I don't know whether it's going to happen again or not.

Now, in all honesty I was nowhere close in my monthly data cap for last month to suffer any real problem. It's also most likely that I won't get too close this month that the "stolen" usage will cause me an issue.

I'm just a fool that would like to insist on a principle: If the measuring systems of the service provider stuff things up then the customer should not be disadvantaged.

Clearly in all systems there will be a need to have a certain amount of tolerance. Otherwise all accounting for all customers would have to happen exactly on the dot of the hour (and then one could argue how well all clocks are synchronized, and which atomic clock to use). I'm not that silly to expect that level of precision. So in my gut feeling 1-2 hours might be the acceptable tolerance. But if a third of a day (i.e. 8h) gets wrongly allocated I'm a bit miffed. That is in my view too much.

@TelstraClear: Thanks for the offer I might make use of it. But as it is unlikely that I'll have this time around any direct (financial) disadvantage I'm not sure what could be "clarified".

What I'm more concerned about is my perception (gained from conversions with your CS staff on earlier occasions about essentially the same matter) that TCL seems to consider this acceptable business practise.

I could therefore see two ways to improve the situation:
(1) Sort out the issues that lead to breakdowns in the timely delivery of usage data (because frankly IMHO its getting worse), and
(2) Put a business rule in place that customers shall not be disadvantaged if usage that crosses over between two billing periods comes in too late (and gets therefore allocated in the wrong period).

I'm sure the very minor (potential) losses of usage that you might have to write down because of (2) could be minimised by doing (1). What you would gain if doing so is to win back the goodwill of grumbling customers like myself. If you consider that relavant is up to you.

@freitasm: I've now realised that my wording in the OP was not precise enough: instead of "regularly" I should have stated that it did not happen for the first time (more like several times a year).

Screeb

698 posts

Ultimate Geek

#434495 2-Feb-2011 21:04

There have been a bunch of threads on this topic, one by myself. I agree, it's ridiculous, but TelstraClear doesn't care.

Ironclad

28 posts

Geek

#434636 3-Feb-2011 08:27

This same thing has happened to me, and i also agree Telstraclear don't care that usage meter stops updating a random number of hours before midnight.
I complained and was told they could not put the data that was incorrectly applied back to the correct billing cycle.

It does feel like they are stealing from me as well.