Bigpond is the largest ISP in Australia, but it has some major problems that really pisses off many of their users, including this one.

One of the worst is Bigpond’s inability to attribute Internet usage to the correct day, and their reluctance to do anything to fix the problem.

Plenty tell their woes on the popular Whirlpool ^[1] forums of evening usage on the last day of their billing cycle rolling over to the next day, so starting the new billing cycle with a hole in their quota. Here’s some examples…

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1177052&p=51#r1011 ^[2]

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1177052&p=51#r1012 ^[3]

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1177052&p=52#r1038 ^[4]

Even Bigpond Technical Support have no clues, some CSR’s advising the only way to avoid rollover is to not connect after 4 pm on the last day of the billing cycle.  I have no doubt that the advice will prevent rollover, but why can other much smaller ISP’s update usage in nearly real-time, but Australia’s biggest ISP struggles to do it within an 8 hour time frame?

It seems their brain-dead Usage Update process (incorrectly) attributes usage to the day that the process runs, not (correctly) to the day on which the usage happened.

I sent a lengthy complaint to the Telstra CEO’s Office ^[5]. Received a boilerplate reply, but more importantly it has a reference number and the name & title of the person who responded. He tells me to call Bigpond support when it happens and get them to apply a credit. My “Get out of Jail Free” card…

Be easier to just fix it, it’s not rocket science…