Download limits Plusnet

As a customer of Plusnet I am used to getting emails advising me of 'changes to my terms and conditions'.

Recently one included informing me of a new charge to terminate my service - nice given that when I signed up I had to agree to pay a penalty for leaving within a set period.

But after about three years with them this has now reduced to nothing - but now they've just decided to impose a blanket £20 fee.

There was another one a year or so ago informing me of a change to my download limits.

When I signed up with Plusnet for their plus package there were none, but this changed to 4gb 'peak' and 40gb 'off peak' a month ('peak' it transpires is whenever you actually want to download something...).

I never bust it or come anywhere near, because I don't really download much apart from software patches (although due to the buggy nature of some games these can be pretty huge some times [are you listening EA?]).

EA recently distributed the excellent Spore to journalists thorough their download system, as opposed to sending out a physical copy.

The 3.5gb file was pretty huge and I noticed afterwards that my internet was moving rather slowly - in fact my dial up connection from years ago would have put it to shame.

So I contacted Plusnet via their online customer service, and got a quick response - I'd busted my download limit for 'peak' times and they'd punished me by throttling back my broadband speed.

BUT they instantly waived the restriction (not permanently) and opened my account back up again, which was nice, but also possibly because they realised I'd been unfairly punished - after all I'd never before come remotely close to doing it before.

For me it just threw into stark relief the powers of companies for changing their conditions.

A key point for me with signing up to Plusnet was the no download limits - I just don't like feeling I'm operating on a rationed service, although I'm not a big data hog.

But they just changed it and sent me an email, just like changing the 'switchover' charges.

So the lesson may be - read the small print when you sign up to something - just so you know what it was when they change it.

And now with Plusnet if I decide to take my only recourse as a customer and clear off, they've changed the T&C so I get charged for that too.