PlusNet Customers Harassed by Phantom Billing and Data Usage Errors

UK ISP PlusNet has apologised after its automated data usage monitoring system suddenly lost the plot and began applying incorrect usage levels to some of the provider’s broadband customers on older capped usage accounts, which triggered a mass of email warnings about excessive usage.

The result meant that affected customers were sent multiple notifications about their data usage, which continued until they magically reached the packages usage cap. Some subscribers were then informed that “once you’ve used your 40GB we’ll charge you an extra £5 for every 5GB” and began to worry.

Apparently the situation caused so much panic that even the BBC ended up running a story on it, although mercifully it was all just a mistake on the part of PlusNet’s system.

PlusNet Status Update – 18/02/2015 @ 14:58

This is an update to the earlier post regarding some customers on older limited usage accounts having incorrect usage applied. This may have caused some customers to receive email notifications advising of incorrect additional usage charges. This additional usage would have appeared from yesterday afternoon, 17th February.

We’d like to assure you that we’ll be removing or crediting any incorrect charges due to this issue from customer’s accounts. We’ll also be removing the incorrect usage from customer’s accounts.

The underlying problem which caused this issue has been identified and resolved.

Sorry for any inconvenience this caused.

Kind Regards,

Chris Parr
Customer Relations

In a separate statement PlusNet said they were now “confident that no customers have been overcharged“, although we still don’t know precisely what caused the ISP’s system to throw a Skynet.