Escape from Halo 3+

[WSH]

That's coming through a Sky puck that I've been using for 4 months now.  Increased my monthly bandwidth usage from roughly 800GB to 1250GB, so it must be the puck.  TV is on about 8 hours a day and it is full HD 1920 x 1080p, so I'm not that surprised.

(Strangely it has a TV aerial connection but doesn't seem to use it and no option in the settings to enable it?)

[Kimberlin]

@WSH 

I don’t subscribe to Sky whatsoever, but when I moved into my new build house, I bought a large Sky dish which I fixed inside my garden and then ran the cabling myself into the house. I’ve fitted dishes at home before so I know what I’m doing, even so much as having a satellite finder box which plugs into the LNB during setup. Anyway, I cannot get Freeview off a loft aerial (we’re not allowed roof aerials) so the dish setup is ideal for us. It at least allows us to watch our regional news programs.

[Andrew600]

@WSH 

That explains it. A lot of what I watch is UHD, so uses a lot more bandwidth.

The puck is used globally under different names and the aerial socket is disabled for U.K. users, but is there for use in other countries.

[WSH]

Seems strange.  I don't suppose you know why it's disabled in this country?

[Andrew600]

I don’t, no.
I can only guess Sky have no incentive to inadvertently produce a Freeview/Freely box.
Apparently it’s required for use in Italy which is a reason why it’s there at all.

[WSH]

That would seem par for the course in this country.

I've just run the maths and 450GB per month is about right if you assume HD TV needs 5Mb/s.

[Andrew600]

We had another call from retentions Stevenage today.
My other half answered it. Apparently there was a long silence before they spoke, so they’re multi dialling, not calling us specifically. I always assume that behaviour means it’s a scam call from Mumbai or the like, and so did she.
To make matters worse, she had no idea what they said to her because she couldn’t hear them over the call centre background noise.

Not good enough BT, not good enough by a long way!

[Kimberlin]

@Andrew600 

Probably time to finally block that number 👍

[chrisjp]

I find quite a few conversations with BT agents are almost unintelligible because of (1) background noise and (2) gabbling by the agent.

[Davaar9]

I have been on FTTP, DV and Halo 3+ for around 3 years, including the last 12 months out of contract, but have never used any of the 'benefits'. I decided to have a look at options, and got as far as registering interest with Vodaphone yesterday, which triggered a virtually immediate SMS and email from BT -'sorry you're thinking of leaving us, please get in touch to see what we can do for you'.

I didn't take it any further at the time, but then the retentions team called me this morning to 'see what they could do', and I was able to re-contract at the same speed (900/110) and ditch Halo 3+, without any real resistance  or pressure to switch to EE from the agent, giving a saving of nearly 50% on my current bill!!

I may just have done this at the right time by luck, but it can be done!