Back in April, Canadian cable operator Cogeco hoisted metered billing on the back of their customers, applying caps as low as 10GB per month and overages as high as $2.50 per gigabyte on top of existing tiers. When customers complained, Cogeco insulted customer intelligence by insisting the move wasn't about making money. Cogeco then decided to raise monthly rates as well, apparently just for good measure. Except Cogeco's metered billing ambitions hit a snag when customers started complaining Cogeco's meters didn't actually work.

In July Cogeco told us they were doing everything possible to fix the errors (dubbed "anomalies"), and that thankfully they wouldn't bill customers until Cogeco had "completed any required fine tuning of the metering and notification tools."

It's now almost October and users in our Cogeco forum say that many of them have begun to see charges on their bills for overages, despite the fact they're still having problems with Cogeco's meters. "I had to call and fight with them to get the charges refunded as the majority of my month was on Pro but the bandwidth counter thought I was on Standard for the entire month," says one anomaly.

Users are still debating the differences between their own bandwidth measuring tools and Cogeco's, which has to be putting additional strain on the company's support systems. Other users continue to complain that the company's e-mail alert system, which notifies you when you're getting close to your cap, doesn't work properly.

At the beginning of the summer we noted how Canadian Cable company Cogeco had officially launched a plan to impose caps as low as 10GB per month, with per gigabyte overages as high as $2.50. The problem? Cogeco wasn't able to get their meters to actually work correctly, with inaccurate or conflicting usage amounts being reflected via online Cogeco usage meters and customer e-mail alerts. Cogeco told us they were working on the problem, and fortunately would delay billing customers until they got things fixed.

August is nearing its end and users in our Cogeco forum say the meters still don't work properly.

Canadian cable operator Cogeco was supposed to start billing customers in June after they implemented a new metered billing model. However, as we noted last week, many users found Cogeco's meters didn't accurately reflect usage. Customers have complained that Cogeco's daily usage portal seems broken, and that automatic warning e-mail alerts don't match the portal. Cogeco reached out to us to note that they're working on the problems, while at the same time downplaying the breadth of the issues.

"Cogeco is confident that their high speed customers have an accurate means of gauging their on-line consumption and that their invoicing reflects the consumption displayed on the customer usage measurement tool provided by the company," Cogeco's Marie Carrier tells us. Carrier insists regular performance checks indicate that their tracking system is accurate, and "the vast majority of customers are satisfied with their consumption tracking and rates."

"However, anomalies can occur in the best of software applications – and we are addressing those mentioned in Broadband Reports," she says.

Back in April, Canadian cable operator Cogeco hoisted metered billing on the back of their customers, applying caps as low as 10GB per month and overages as high as $2.50 a month on top of existing tiers. When customers complained, Cogeco insulted customer intelligence by insisting the move wasn't about making money. Cogeco then decided to raise monthly rates as well, just for good measure.

I don't understand how they can charge for overages if they can't properly meter their services -Cogeco customer, complaining about Cogeco's new, broken meters.

After a several month adjustment period where customer usage was tracked but not billed, Cogeco was supposed to start billing in June. Judging from posts to our Cogeco forum, the process isn't going particularly smoothly for most customers, in part because the bandwidth usage monitor Cogeco is using doesn't work.

Much to the chagrin of their customers, Canadian cable operator Cogeco recently implemented caps as low as 10GB per month, while charging users up to $2.50 per additional gigabyte. Like Time Warner Cable here in the States, the company seemingly felt it necessary to then subsequently insult their customers' intelligence by insisting the move wasn't about making money. If the low caps and high overages weren't enough, users in our Cogeco forum note the carrier is taking things one step further by raising prices on their standard (10Mbps, 60GB cap, $1.50 per GB overages) and Pro (16Mbps, 100GB cap, $1.00 per GB overages) tiers starting July 16 by $1 and $7 respectively. Like in the States, actions that laugh in the face of customer demand usually indicate too little competition. The rate hikes certainly aren't about making money.