The Techsploder : Time to audit ISPs' usage meters

Are you getting what you're paying for?

I'm not so sure, not when it comes to NZ's Internet-on-the-meter with small data caps. You pay for 1, 3, 5 and 10GB of traffic, maybe more, and if you go over it, you're either throttled down to dial-up speed or have to pay more. If we're going to have that, ISPs should have to make some effort to ensure that their usage meters are accurate.

However, how do we know that data usage is being accurately recorded? The TelstraClear example recently is perhaps an extreme one, but it's not the first or last I've heard about.

Now Ihug customers are up in arms over what they say is a meter recording random usage. One Ihug customer sent me three screen grabs from May 11, 12, and 13:

The person says he hasn't used as much data as the meter says, and runs an app to keep count of the bytes traversing his end of the Internet. Ihug tries to wash it hands of having to provide an accurate usage meter by saying the data tracker only "gives an idea" of how much has been used and that there's no guarantee the information is 100% current at any given time.

It's difficult to say who is right or wrong here, but I am struck by the fact that Ihug's usage meter displays different amounts of data for the same days, within that three-day interval. How is that possible?

Some more voices from the ihug.general newsgroup:

After emailing IHUG (3 days into the month my useage was not only extraordiarily high, but the data useage page shows double the data on the monthly detail page) they suggested I use Net Limiter to monitor useage.
Too early to tell exactly, because I started monitoring after downloading email etc, but now my useage shows:
IHUG: 101MB
NetLim: 18.7MB
I certainly did not use 80MB before installing

Just to add to the tales of woe.....

I've been online for 1.5hrs today. And all I've done is download a few emails and look at a few web pages. No attachments. NetLimiter tells me I've used 500KB. IHUG's usage meter reckons 50MB.

I've only been on broadband for 3 days and the previous days look outrageously high as well - but I've only just got NetLimiter 2 Monitor to get a better feel as to what is going on.

I have watched my allowance rise today - and kept a few periodic printouts which make interesting reading. The traffic is growing for *previous* days - between 3pm and 5pm my traffic for 10th May went from 513MB to 1074MB, and the traffic for 11th May grew from 4693MB to 4721MB. To my recollection I haven't travelled any time machines today. Bear in mind this was over a 2 hour period - different days have been growing prior to this. Currently my 10th May is up to 1343MB and 11th May is up to 5325MB. It's fair evidence that the usage meter is broken.

Just called IHUG and spoke with someone there.... they are aware of the issue (duh) and are awaiting some hardware changes before the issue will be resolved. I was asked to call back during business hours to speak to a manager who will be able to remove the rate limiting/extra data.
Dear Customer,

It has come to our attention that some customers may have had their data usage calculated incorrectly. With that, the rate limit has not been inforced your account. This will have no affect on your internet browsing and a fault has been lodged to have this issue corrected.

Thank you for your continued support of ihug products and services.

The person who contacted me is taking the matter to the Commerce Commission, and I can't blame him. After all, even the lowliest market trader has to have accurate scales at pain of huge fines if they're not.

So why then do ISPs who sell metered quantities of data get away with usage meters showing random data?

Posted by Juha Saarinen on May 14, 2007 8:55 PM | Permalink

Comments

Everyone: the issue should now be sorted, but if not, let me know - email to juha at pcworld dot co dot nz is the fastest as I don't get notifications when comments are made in the blog (sigh).

Posted by: Juha | May 20, 2007 11:44 AM

I have been an ihug customer for about 10 years now, and the sevice and garbage served in the last 12 months is sorely trying my patience as a customer.

emails have been delayed (by as much as 12 days!!). Thank goodness for gmail with its MUCH larger inbox, and seemingly more reliable service. The ihug inbox is far too small in todays email climate.

I guess I am similar to many customers, in that I like to keep an eye on my usage so that I stay within allocation. I have found the usage meter particularly frustrating. Ihug you must provide accurate data so that I can budget my 5GB allocation.

A couple of days ago, I downloaded a few videos, and then found the useage meter indicating 1700MB for the day, which seemed unusually high. Today I find that day has been reset to 142MB for that day.

Ihug's response "We'd like to assure all ihug customers, and everyone that has commented on this issue, that ihug's data measurement methods are extremely accurate"- bullshit! There is a still a problem for me, the customer!

My patience is wearing thin - is it time to walk and take my hard earned dollars to a provider who can give better service?

Ihug - refresh yourselves - bring back the service that you used to have!!

Posted by: rob | May 18, 2007 7:42 AM

is data caps there in NZ ?
is there any ISP provide unlimited bandwidth ?

Posted by: Slim | May 17, 2007 9:30 PM

Hi,
I have been with Ihug for 11 years. Over the last 2 years it has been nothing then frustration.
Last one, in the morning of the 15th I checked my usage,
it was 4.52 Gb of my 5 Gb limit. So I had enough left for 2 days left till I start my new month.
At night of the same day I checked again. I had used 63 Mb that day but my total showed an increase of more than 1Gb to 5.61 Gb, all in red and over the limit. I complaint. Next day my total usage was 3.6 GB for the month (-1 day). I think they just have a step at it and hope nobody notice it. Also for over a week you could not check usage.

Posted by: Frank | May 17, 2007 6:06 PM

Seems like despite thier official response " there is no problem" they are now acknowledging the issue. My useage has been fixed as of last night - though not before I was told I am liable for whatever useage is showing, download a thirdparty monitoring tool and there is nothing wrong with ther system. I emailed them three times, and rang four before getting this appropriate response -
MY RESPONSE FROM IHUG
Thanks for your email.
Currently we have been experiencing some issues with our data usage monitoring system
caused by recent upgrades the problem are currently being fixed. This issue should be
resolved by midnight to night at which time your data usage for the current month
will be re-processed and a more accurate measure of your usage will be loaded into
our system. Once this is done you should be able to view your usage in the my
accounts section of our website. My apologies for any inconvenience caused by this if
you have any further questions you can reply to this email or give us a call on 0800
438 448.

Best Regards,
*************
Customer Services Representative

Posted by: Mike | May 17, 2007 12:13 PM

Thanks Stu and Gavin for the links to the forums. Ihug's read the blog post, and say they'll have some comment for me later today.

Will post that when I get it.

John: that's part of the issue too. For all you know, customers are getting billed for traffic they don't generate, like ARP, multicast, and so forth. It also depends on where the traffic is counted - it may have changed now, but last time I asked, DSL traffic was counted at the Regional Access Node or RAN, and not your router or the exchange even. In other words, the traffic may not even reach you but still be counted.

Posted by: Juha | May 15, 2007 11:00 AM

To Anonymous regarding DOS - it is provably a problem on ihug's part and not DOS, due to the fact that reported traffic is increasing for days already past. Ihug know they have a problem, yet only do something about it when contacted by the individual customer, so are committing fraud. I too have reported them to the Commerce Commission and I encourage everyone else to do the same.

Posted by: crispy | May 15, 2007 9:59 AM

Thanks for putting this up. I reached my limit in the middle of last month for no reason and I changed myself to the fair use plan. Checked all my computers, wireless settings etc and still doing almost a GIG a day (even when I am at work during the day). I'll certainly contact IHUG regarding this.

Posted by: Anonymous | May 15, 2007 9:41 AM

I am not coming out in IHugs defence here as I am also affected to a small ammount. However people have to realise they may be getting DOS attacks to their IP address. There modem/router may be filtering these out and of course their software would never see them but they do add up to data counted on there account.

Posted by: John Veldthuis | May 15, 2007 8:57 AM

There is a thread on PressF1 about this:
http://www.pressf1.co.nz/showthread.php?t=79182

Posted by: stu161204 | May 14, 2007 10:18 PM

Time for a commerce commission revup for the whole sector. That, or they drop the whole archaic idea of charging per gigabyte.

Mind you, its no worse then how prepay phone users are at the mercy of the telcos charging and are even more in the dark as far as how they are spending their usage then ISP customers are with the data that they use.

Posted by: Richard | May 14, 2007 10:13 PM

And how much $$ have they made off users who do not know much about the net and think paying another 20 a month is normal ?
Been no response to my email I sent IHUG today as per the PressF1 forums.
Bet you if I asked to enable another service on my account, Id get an instant response.

I moved to IHUG because of crap customer service etc from another certain ISP (See "here we go again" threads http://www.xpd.co.nz/forums/viewforum.php?f=17&sid=a3c7ee9bc3547023d660d86e1ee1febc ) but now it looks like Im going to get crap from IHUG as well.

Cant win....

Posted by: Gavin Q | May 14, 2007 10:10 PM

Ihug were informed of this issue over 1 month ago. Still it remain broken. How many $ have they saved from this issue?

Posted by: craig sutton | May 14, 2007 9:58 PM