[TOS'd]

Just talked to shaw tech support. I'll post what the guy said to me, some stuff may be old news to some. Also some explanations from him may be the typical bs response. Anyways,

I asked about getting the modem usage feature online so I can check my usage:

We used to be able to do that with the old tool but we upgraded our tools and we've lost that functionality for now as the new upgrades are pending.
the new one can't be added and the old one has been removed. But everyone should be upgraded soon

When do you get charged for going over your cap:

You need to go over your usage two consecutive months and then if the third month goes over you'll be on Usage Based Billing. So if you see a usage graph on your bill then it'll take a couple months before any actual charges are applied

About the reduced bandwidth cap:

Well what happened is we did an increase and realized when we acquired our new bandwidth tools half way through that it was over reporting. Customers actually used less than we thought so we realized changing the bandwidth might relay the wrong message and people may start using more usage or trying to "use up" their allotted bandwidth. We realized that this decision had to be rescinded to manage the business better so they decided at the 6 month mark it would be changed back. It does sort of suck that it was done so close to the Usage Based Billing inception but we figured we might as well rip the bandaide off now rather than wait any longer which would cause even more upset. We basically anticipated that there'd be poor reception to this, but it had to be done. One of the negative things too is that in response to this, Telus upped their limits for no other reason to remain competitive with us so we sort of shot ourselves in the foot

At the end of the day though, not a lot of customers really go over their limits and Usage Based Billing was coming regardless of any shifting in our packages. We're making sure to work with customers and we actually pushed back the UBB charges for people in Edmonton that received UBB before all the other Shaw markets. So we're doing our best to make sure the negative impact is minimized. And so far the reception has been really good, other than the initial shock, confusion, upset, etc

I mentioned using my router bandwidth logs to determine if I am over or under my cap:

Our usage is showing even lower, I believe we actually round down some of the usage so what we report is modest in comparison to routers. Also, we do it by billing cycle and not monthly. I use DDWRT firmware and monitored mine and found that it reports higher than what I see at work as well

What are my options in the future since I am constantly going over my 100GB cap:

you can add a data pack which will can offset that. It's $5 for 10GB, $20 for 60GB and $50 for 250GB if you anticipate that you'll be over. Also, we're being liberal and courteous and doing things like adding these data packs and backdating them for people that go over and missed the memo, or had trouble with their monitoring tools, etc. So we're basically telling people that there shouldn't be a huge amount of shock and upset and if there is, we'll help where we can. We're doing this on a case by case basis so I can pretty much assure you that there shouldn't be too much trouble if and when you are billed