Upload, download, WHAT?

I've been with Sympatico for six or seven years now, beginning with dial-up and now on an 'intermediate' plan, fast but not the fastest. I've never had a problem with the service and their technical people are good at untangling me when things go wrong (rare).
I was checking out my most recent credit card bill yesterday (trying to avoid looking too closely at what I pay each month on my vet's Maserati), and the cost is now DOUBLE what it was in January. Monthly payments have been stable, around 35$, give or take a couple of dollars. Last month, 68$ :eek: .
Luckily, the person I spoke with in billing survived my tirade ;) and promptly credited me, but he was unable to explain WHY this happened. My habits never change - I read tons of newspapers, go on pets.ca, do a little surfing on special subjects and that is IT. I never download anything - music, video, games (in fact, in most cases I can't do video, probably because I have not been able to download Service Pack 2 for XP, another outstanding problem) but I realize that I am nevertheless downloading without realizing it on some of these sites (as he imperfectly explained).
But given that my habits have not changed one iota, HOW did this happen?

I always , always have problems with bell's invoices , phone , satellite dish , internet , always !!! And it always take AT LEAST 2-3 phone calls on my part for them to correct it. But where I live I don't have other options but to go with them :frustrated:

Bell Express Vu gave me a couple free months on 2 occasions because I just told them to stop the service , I was too fed up.

This is just a guess but one of the news sites may have more kilbytes than you are allowed and they charged more?? I don't know other than that - every time we visit a site, we download everything that is on that site = pictures, html or other pages, music files if they play, even videos. If you use IE and go to Tools (I am trying to recall since I use Foxfire) and then Internet Options, and then under where it reads Temporary Internet Files, click Settings and View Files, you will see where they all are. You can delete the ones you don't want - prob most of them. It just gives you an idea of what you have. If you do not delete them on a regular basis, they do to other parts of hard drive and you can accumulate gigabytes of programs, images and files on your system.

Other than that, I have no idea why your ISP charges you so much. I have a flat rate - download what I want.

Good luck!!