If you sign up to wireless internet in Australia I might have a quiet guffaw at your expense.

If you signed up to wireless internet in Australia and had kids you’d be stupid.

If you signed up to wireless internet in Australia and had kids who had their own laptops you’d be pretty stupid.

If you signed up to wireless internet in Australia, had kids who had their own laptops and then blamed your ISP when they blew out your plan limit, you’d be a freaking moron.

Geelong mum Michele Collins has recently experienced first hand the result of not reading your ISP contract and letting your kids run wild on the internet.

Did she learn anything?

No.

In an age of ridiculous caps, outrageous excess usage charges and ever increasing speeds, why people continue to think the internet is a ‘set and forget’ utility is beyond me. Gone are the days of Telstra and Dodo advertising ‘COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY UNLIMITED*!’ with an asterisk list containing 500 reasons why the plan is not unlimited.

These days it tends to be pretty out in the open what your signing up to so there really isn’t any excuse.

Michelle’s 16 year old son, Jack Featherston recently decided he wanted to download Dumb and Dumber and Freddy Got Fingered. In doing so he used a 3 wireless internet plan and racked up $573 in excess usage charges.

When informed she was now liable, Michele pulled the old ‘contact the media and play dumb’ routine only her story just doesn’t add up.

The contract pointed out the costs incurred if the owner of the plan went over the limit but mother and son didn’t read the small print when they signed up.

“Jack has learnt from this, we both have. He’s gone through his contract more, even I have. It costs 10 cents a megabyte and to me that meant nothing, I didn’t realise how big a file would be. I knew if you went over it would cost extra, but didn’t realise how much extra.”


For starters if you browse over to 3′s broadband pricing page, you can clearly see the excess usage charges are there. They aren’t just buried away in some 3,000 page document you’re not required to read when you signup – they’re right there in front of your eyes before you even commit to anything.

The $29 plan clearly states that excess is charged at 10c a megabyte over your allowance.

How can you claim you didn’t know much extra you were going to be charged or how big files were? Whether it’s a 3.6 terabyte file or a 5 megabyte file the rate is still the same, 10c a megabyte if you go over 3 gigabytes.

If you don’t know what the hell a gigabyte is then ask before you sign up. I also find it hard to imagine a sixteen year old boy has no idea about download limits and how big files are.

At 10c a megabyte, $573 in excess usage is 5.7 gigabytes. Now we all know the kid was downloading illegally, as Angus Kidman of Lifehacker points out;

Neither flick appears to be available on iTunes or via BigPond Movies’ download option, so it seems likely that they were accessed from (ahem) illegitimate sources.


As far as I know nobody is offering legal massive multiple gigabyte sized HD downloads to Australians yet.

Your standard pirate divx rips of movies run in at either 1.4gb or 700mb which even at 3gb leaves 2.7 gigabytes unaccounted for. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest if the sixteen year old is downloading illegal movies then the other 2.7gb was probably porn.

Kid + laptop + unmonitored internet + huge downloads + confused parents = porn.

Always. No ifs or buts.

The Geelong Advertiser story mentions that Mrs. Collins also has another 20gb internet plan so I’m going to simply put two and two together and explain exactly what’s happened here.

Hey Michelle, your son downloads copious amounts of porn EVERY MONTH but usually does it on your larger ineternet account. Presumably he connects to this second account wirelessly too.

All that has happened this time is he forgot to switch over which network he was connected to and accidentally downloaded his monthly porn fix (what’s the bet it was close to the end of the billing cycle for the larger plan) on the wrong account.

He then feeds you a rubbish story about downloading some movies from the 90s and you take it to the media and make a complete fool of yourself.

You know what they say about Occam’s razor and all that.

What really bugs me is that despite her son admitting to the downloading (kudos for him not just flatly denying ever doing anything more then ‘checking my emails every few days’), and both of them admitting to never having read the contract they signed up to, Michelle still thinks the ISP is at fault.

“I would imagine 3 (the internet provider) would look at it (the download) and say, `this is huge, do you realise this is going to cost you?’ and then ring me on my mobile. The account is in my name, but they didn’t,” Mrs Collins said.


Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Because you know, ISP’s know that your sons about to download hours of porn before he actually clicks the download button.

“Hey ma’m, I’m just calling to inform you your son has just viewed a suspiciously large amount of porn torrent download pages from his favourite public tracker and will most likely soon be downloading more then your plan can handle.’

‘Oh no this is terrible! What can I do to stop him!?’

‘uh…upgrade your plan? We have some great specials today for only-’

A contract is a contract, if you sign it it’s binding whether you read it or not. When are people going to learn?

Pay up, move on and just be glad you weren’t with Telstra wireless which is quite capable of excess fees of $3800 an hour. $573 in excess usage for the month is nothing.

With the AFACT claiming Australian movie pirates fund terrorism, I’d be more worried about ASIO knocking on your door asking about the recent Indonesian bombings in Jakarta.

That’s right Michelle, your son is a terrorist.

1. Telstra's wireless broadband could cost you $3800 an hour
2. Morons to decide future of the internet in Australia
3. The end result of customs searching people for porn
4. 5 Reasons why Guvera Limited will fail in Australia
5. Hey Telstra, nobody cares about your stupid T-Box