Is this a rip off, or am I missing the point?

[adam.tropics]

So last week a friend asked if I'd pay him a visit while he went online and upgraded his broadband account. He's very technophobic, so yes, no worries. He logged into his account, and with a few clicks, they work out where you are in the billing month, charge for that number of days at the old rate, then charge the remaining days at the new rate, and tell you how much download allowance you have for those days based on a proportion of the new monthly limit. Too easy, came on at midnight, and all was well. Seems fair yes?

Anyway, I am moving back to the UK next week, and my housemate hardly uses the net, and so he wanted to down grade his account. I figure you know, must be the same so just go ahead......I went shopping! In my absence he called them....rather than muck around online. He maintains you get further talking to a real live person. So he tells them what he wants, and they have sold him on this (as repeated to me later)

"Well sir we can't change it over today. You will have to wait to the next billing cycle, on January 23rd. Reason being you are 1.5GB in to your month, and your new monthly limit is 1GB, so we would have to charge 0.5 GB at penalty rates, plus penalty rate everything from now until the end of the month"

Now bear in mind, I am on unlimited....sort of, 12GB then shaped. Is it just me, or bearing in mind these are both with the same company, is this plain ridiculous. I may have got myself confused here, but as far as I can tell, this is plain daft!

Am I missing something obvious?

[tehet]

They love to upgrade you to a more expensive account at the flick of a switch, but downgrading to a cheaper account is somehow more difficult ...

Around here contracts typically last a year. The old contract expires directly after you upgrade. And you can downgrade anytime you like in a technical sense, but you'll have to pay the premium until the old contract expires.