This news broke a few minutes ago. Via a press Release Shaw has announced that they will be engaging in customer consultation sessions regarding usage based billing in February and March, and will not be charging any overage costs until that process is complete.
There is no guarantee that this will change anything. This is really only a delay of at least one month, as after two warnings people may have begun seeing charges as early as March. However this is an encouraging sign that Shaw is at the very least listening to its customers and the outrage that moving to usage based billing has caused.
I will try to write up more on this when I can properly understand and absorb what this really means, but for now please find links to the press releases below.
http://www.shaw.ca/Internet/New-Data-Usage/?WT.mc_id=C796A1718S98
Lisa
February 8, 2011
Thanks so much for keeping on top of this – your blog is the only place I’ve been able to find any info. Not sure what to make of this new development. My online tracker shows I have gone over the last 2 months but I have received no notification on my bills to this effect, so I’m wondering what the deal is. I would say that the only way for Shaw to salvage customers at this point is to match Telus’s price per usage rates (i.e. $50 for 125G).
wunderbar
February 8, 2011
Lisa: thank you for the kind words. Shaw had put this new policy into place as of January 1. So you will likely start seeing notifications that you are going over your limit on your first or second d bill after that. To this point they had not been notifying everyone, only users who were in the “trial”
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Spencer
February 9, 2011
Thanks for spending some time to explain the terminlogy towards the newbies!