Excessive data charges

We have had the device since August. Loved it in the beginning. The past three months we have had EXCESSIVE overages (30GB over)- with minimal notification from Verizon. When I call to get help all they say is someone is using the data. They can't "see" where we have been on the web. I signed up for notifications and recieved some of them. According to Verzion it is only a notification and it my responsibility to log on and check usage. In 40 minutes we used half of the data for the month and Verizon has been of no help. Does any one know if there is something I can set on the computer? We have a HP TouchSmart. Thank you

Normally background updates are what get people in trouble with thier data plans. If a computer is connected to the internet it will check to see if updates are available and download them in regular increments. Even worse, if an update fails then most update services will attempt to redownload the entire update rather than pick up where it left off. When you reloaded you most likely set all of your update applications back to the normal configurations and they are wrecking havoc on your plan. You must look through your computer and make sure that all of those automatic updates are disabled or working correctly.
What you should do is request a data log from Verizon. You are correct when you say that Verizon cannot "see" your internet usage but the log is helpful for other reasons. For example you can cross reference the timestamps of the large sessions and try to remember what you may have been doing at that time. Look for trends like large downloads at 3:00 AM every thursday and work your way back from that.
I would also suggest going through the various resets of the MiFi to help clear up any temporary connection issues. The best one for you would be pressing the reset button under the back cover with a paper clip for 10-15sec.

Similar Messages

Excessive mobile data charges

I have just received my latest BT monthly mobile bill for my son's phone which includes £300 of non-itemised data usage charges. As I do not have the unlimited option which is available for only £5 per month I am faced with this horrendous charge. When I contacted them they explained that the charge is correct but do not have to provide any of the following;
Details of how the charge is made up or justify that they are correct. No times or dates are provided.
Advise me or provide any sort of warning when the 10MB free allowance has run out.
Justify why the unlimited usage charge bears no resemblance to actual costs that can be occurred without this, at £1.47 per GB. With their broadband charges you only pay a few pounds if you exceed the monthly allowance, nothing like this.
The costs are listed in the small print but you would still not be able to know the amount used without checking data usage every day.
My point is that no-one would expect charges like this to build up so quickly and without warning. Does anyone have any similar experience of this?

Hi Brian,
Sympathise with you absolutely.
I had a similar but slightly less expensive issue following a software upgrade to my HTC s620. The upgrade was perfomed by a BT customer service agent who remotely connected to my PC and made the upgrade happen. Unfortunately she forgot to inform me that I'd start receiving all my emails to my phone as well. I realised when - over two separate monthly bills - there were unexplained high data charges. Two months running BT customer service reversed out these charges. (I didn't use my phone for emails.) I have now started subscribing to the £5/month extra data package as my 20-yr old daughter is using our HTC Hero. We're now operating well within our new data limit.
May I suggest that you "count to 10" and basically go on bended knee to BT Customer Services and explain what has happened and that it was purely accidental/unintentional. Plead poverty. With luck you may have the same good fortune as me.
My advice is: Be patient and friendly and allow the staff to do a favour for a "nice" customer who has a heartbroken son begging foir his father's forgiveness. Hopefully this is the truth anyway....!
I agree with you and don't think that is at all fair to penalise customers on the basis of your bullet points.
If BT wants its brand to be synonomous with fairness, clarity and transparency - it still has a few light years to go!

IPhone 5 excess data usage

Hi, we have purchased an iphone 5 plan with telstra for my daughter and in the first 4 days of plan, excess data of 7GB was recorded! I contacted Telstra and they have for a once time only waived the excess charges and data was turned off, no more data was used for month. This month, first day my daughter used 100 mb of 1GB of data allowance! I asked what she was doing and she accessed only afew websites to check when she was working which should be a few kb of data. Data has been turned of again. We are frightened to use internet on iphone 5.
My Samsung Galaxy 2 with Vodaphone I leave data on all the time and look at webites and use a few apps which need to be connected to data and have used in the last 10 days 18mb!
We are taking daughter's phone into telstra and will talk to them about either the phone or their system.
Is there a problem with iPhone 5 or is it Telstra.

There are numerous wifi problems with iOS 6. It's possible that your daughter's phone is switching from wifi to cellular and she is not noticing that. Still, that's a lot of data, so there might be something else going on. Search this forum for threads about excess data usage. There's a lot of info. Also, look at the threads listed to the right under "More Like This".

Does the 4s have the same excessive data issues as the 5?

I've been waiting to get the iPhone 5 but I don't want to deal with the issue of the excessive data issues that the iPhone 5 has.It would be my first iPhone, so I would consider settling for the 4s. Does the 4s have same problem as the 5, or should I stay clear of that as well to avoid the headache of the data issue?

Brico. The iPhone 4S doesn't seem to have any issues with being charged data when using wi-fi. However, I would like to tell you that when you're using some apps, you may lose wi-fi and then your data package would kick in. I've noticed this from time to time with hotel internet. I've never gone over my limit and I'm on my phone using apps or the net most of the day. Most of the time I have wi-fi access, but there's plenty of time where I don't so just by keeping a rough record in my head, if I was getting cut off of wi-fi or being charged for it, I'd know by now.

Excess data usage on my from my with pre-paid 3G Wi Fi

I am tearing my hair out with an excess data issue; I hope someone can help me out. I'm using a 3G WiFi on my laptop and over the last week and a half, my data usage has been very high, as have my total hours for a 24-hour period. I've been taking detailed notes about my log on and log off times as well as the data used during the time I'm logged on and since June 26 and I've discovered that I am being charged for time and data even while I am not online. I've now spoken to four different people on the phone at Telstra about this issue. The first two times, I was compensated for this: once with extra credit, the other with extra data; these are a good help for the problem that has happened, but moving forward it doesn't fix the problem of being charged for time and data that I haven't used. And continuously being overcharged makes me cross. Has anyone experienced something similar? I've been on this pre-paid broadband since March and everything had been great - $50 managed to last me the whole month, even as a student, being online most of the day, but from June 22 it started chewing up my data without explanation--I'm on semester break and am not online much at all, so I don't understand. Here's an example:July 1: logged off at 11:12pm - data usage was 180MB - total hours was 8:08:00 (which was already 3 hours more than I had actually been on for the day).July 2: logged on and checked the previous day's data and hours - data usage was 491MB - total hours was 12:02:37! How does this happen? The WiFi was not connected to my laptop (I manually connect and have automatic WiFI connection turned off), my laptop was shut down, and I was asleep! How did the connection manage to use and extra 300MB data over an additional 4 hours? Has something changed? I need to fix this. I've put a complaint into the ombudsman about it.

Hey Sirdal,
I understand that your pre-paid Wi-Fi 4G service seems to be using up a lot of your data allowance from the time that you recharge your in the last 2 recharges.
This is definitely worth investigating but please also bear in mind that the rates of your data iis dependent on the previous data plan you've recharged on.
So if you've changed from a $20 recharge to $30 recharge, you need to disconnect from the internet before reconnecting in order to reset the rate of your data charge to what is equivalent for the $30 recharge because if you've not refreshed your connection since the $20 recharge, you will be charged the same rate as if you were on the $20 rechage rather than the $30 recharge which means that your allowance will be used up more than what it should be. I hope this makes sense Sirdal.

Can't view data charges online

Ok we have 3 non smart phones on our family plan and have data blocks on them as we do not use data at all. I check the accounts weekly for any unusual things and last week noticed minimal data charges on sons account 4 days in a row. He is in another state for 10 weeks and bikes to work evey day so I asked him about it and he said he was putting the phone in his pocket so I figured the button to connect to the net must have got hit while biking and it was trying to connect it's an ENV2 phone so told him to turn it off and put it in his back pack to avoid this.
Now this week when I log in and check the accounts I can see data usage for hubby and I and there is none as should be but for sons line when I try and see the data usage it says your current data usage information is not available at this time. Please check back later. It's been saying this for about 4 days now so what gives? Have not called yet so will do so tomorrow if it's still saying that. Mary

Below is a recent post of mine on another thread and I have updated it with some new information that may be helpful to others suffering from "uninitiated data charges".
I had the very same uninitiated data charges problem and customer service claimed these charges to be valid. I don't possibly see how uninitiated data session charges can be considered valid.
Back in 2010 Verizon was fined by the FCC the largest fine ever levied against a wireless company. 25 million and agreed to refund customers over 50 million dollars. Why? Due to uninitiated data session charges! Washington Post article below at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/28/AR2010102806478.html
They seem to be up to their old tricks...
The best way to make Verizon pay attention is not just switching carriers. The best way is filing a complaint with the FCC. Or do both! It's very easy to file a complaint (an easy form) with the FCC do it here>
https://esupport.fcc.gov/ccmsforms/form2000.action?form_type=2000B
The problem would be termed "uninitiated data session charges".
As mentioned in previous posts by myself and others there has been mysterious data session charges on our bills that were uninitiated by us. My repeated calls to Verizon customer service has resulted in no explanation for these uninitiated data session charges, only the response from CS (Customer Service) that these charges are valid.
My research of the past few weeks has shown that these charges, as mentioned, were uninitiated by the user and are (at
minimum) a result of a program placed by Verizon within the operating system of at least two Verizon models produced by LG. This program initiates the data exchanges that we are billed for, have to pay and have been paying.
Due to a lack of a significant response or resolution on the matter I filed a complaint with the FCC. The action of the FCC was swift in notifying Verizon of my complaint and charges.
Then “lo and behold” I receive a phone call from a Jennifer Rathburn (770) 521-5636 of the Verizon Executive offices in Atlanta notifying me that they would like to resolve this matter with me. Jennifer’s demeanor and action seems to indicate that she would like to satisfy me and would be investigating my complaint regarding the uninitiated data session charges because they care about their customers. It would, however, be tough to convince me of that, as I believe I would never have gotten ANY resolution short of my filing a complaint with the FCC. At present Verizon has until June 29, 2012 to respond to FCC in regards to my complaint.
Over 6 months of complaints to their CS and I never got any type of action or explanation of the data session charges except for them to say that the charges were valid. I heard the phrase,“these charges are valid” so many times from so many different CS reps that it seemed the reps were trained to give that response. I finally got one of the CS reps to admit that actually was the case. They WERE trained to give that response.
You may also find it interesting to read the FCC Consent Decree, which Verizon agreed to in 2010 to stop the FCC
investigation. You can do that here http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-10-2068A2.pdf
In the Decree, Verizon Wireless represents that:
the Company conducted a comprehensive, good-faith, internal investigation into whether Paygo customers had been incorrectly billed for data usage;
(ii) based on the internal investigation, the Company has concluded that the majority of the erroneous charges involved data exchanges caused by third-party software (created by a third-party but they left out the part saying they had placed it there) built into certain customers’ phones, while other charges resulted from, inter alia, customers accessing certain web links that should not have incurred charges, devices that incurred charges for attempts to access data when there was insufficient network coverage to complete the transfer, and unwanted third-party data transfers affecting customers with content filters;
(iii) based on the internal investigation, the Company has further determined that a total of approximately 15 million Paygo Customers were, or may have been, erroneously billed for data usage from November 2007 to the Effective Date
(iv) based on the internal investigation, including a review of billing records and other relevant data, the Company estimates that the total amount of the refunds and credits that should be paid to those Paygo Customers is approximately $52.8 million. (**** that's a BIG mistake!)
In consideration for the termination of the Investigation, Verizon Wireless agrees to the terms, conditions, and procedures contained herein.
If you read these “terms and conditions” I think you will agree with me that Verizon has “forgotten” their responsibility under that decree.
At first Jennifer had led me to believe that mine was an isolated incident and also tried to convince me it was a data charge for picture messages but now that I have gathered a large amount of evidence against Verizon particularly on the scope of the problem I will be making another complaint to the FCC.
C'mon Verizon... "same ol, same ol" You may have made a "mistake" last time but I'm betting I can prove this time it was no "mistake"!
Anyone wishing to contact me directly may do so at [email protected]

How can I reduce excessive data usage?

My wife and I recently moved to the country and have no internet available by a physical cable or wire from an ISP. Our internet service is provided through a Verizon Jetpack that we lease from Verizon. We have an iPhone 4s, iPhone 5s, an iPad 1, and an iPad 2 (both iPads are WiFi only)
Our problem is excessive data usage. Prior to our move, our iPhones each used approx .2GB per month. 16 days into our current billing month, the iPhones have each used approx 1.2GB, but our Jetpack (which creates our home WiFi for our iPads) has already used 10GB. We do not stream anything on our iPads. We use them in the evening for surfing the internet, checking Facebook, and playing Words With Friends. That's about it. The Verizon online data calculator indicates we shoud be using about 4GB per month based on our iPad usage. Yet my data usage log says that one night this week between 7:30 PM and 11:30 PM, our Jetpack used a full 1GB. Is it possible that our Jetpack is simply "burning up" GBs while we sleep?

On my iPhone 4 running iOS 6, Settings > General > Usage quotes the installed size of the apps not the data usage. I've just installed the Onavo Count which claims to record data usage of each app so one can see which the greedy ones are.

How is it possible to accrue data charges on wifi and asleep?

I'm not very happy with what's going on right now. My family of 3 shares a data plan of 8GB. I use under 1G, my husband <1G-1.5G and my son uses a ton so I decided to start looking into when/how much data is being used. In the previous billing cycle we went over by .009 on the final day of the billing cycle so what's the point to pay $10 for 2G and then not be able to change it back, therefore I took the stupid $15 overage charge for literally nothing. Anyway, I began to look through the time stamps and data usage per phone and it's pretty fishy. I'm being charged data at 4:06am, 10:06am, 4:06pm and so on. I have an iphone5, my husband has an iphone6 and my son an iphone 6+. Spoke with a rep tonight who claimed it may be due to my wifi losing connectivity and auto updating while connected to the LTE. That's a load. My whole family switched to Verizon because we couldn't ever get a good signal where we live with AT&T. My husband finally was forced to try a different company due to work and having to have a reliable network where we live. Not one dropped call, not one issue with wifi-Verizon was actually the miracle mobile provider I never knew existed. I waited a few months to make sure that it wasn't too good to be true and at once dropped AT&T totally and switched my son and my phone to Verizon as well. Having a teenager I knew we needed to probably have more data to be on the safe side but they can't seem to tell me how his data is being used and from 4/2 to today (4/14) he has used over 4G of data according to them. I pull up the dates and times and know for a fact that he was connected to home wifi for 1.6G+ and at his school wifi for another 1.6G+ and only 1.2G+ could have possibly been used off wifi. And I also see that there are massive amounts of complaints regarding this same type of sham. Not to mention I had added Family Base to be able to set limits on the data my son uses. But apparently since he's able to access the MyVerizon account from his phone (albeit he isn't an authorized user on the Family Base plan) he is able to go in and change any parameters I had set up. So tonight I go in and remove this feature from our account and now 30 minutes later I get a "Welcome to Verizon Family Base" text. WTH is going on??? I want real answers now or I will be looking into what others have done regarding this type of abuse. I had high hopes that this was going to be an honest, reliable network I could trust but this data business is insanely bogus. I'd like to hear back from someone regarding getting this researched and resolved. I don't want to feel discontent about something that has been going good so far. But I don't really feel like I should have to turn off all cellular data and close all open apps when I'm on wifi in order to keep from having data charged inappropriately. Thanks for your help and prompt resolution to my concern.

We are suffering from the same nightmare. It has been 8 solid weeks of phone calls to Verizon, then Apple, then to our cable service provider; daily data checks; overage charges; fights with the teen; HOURS of time invested in trying to get to the bottom of sudden and exponential jump in data usage. It started about a month after we upgraded my daughter's phone to a 5s. She is even more conscientious than me about not using it unless we are connected to wifi. For the first month, all was fine and we were going through the normal 2G. Then, with absolutely NO habit or usage change on our end, we were blasting through that like lightening. She was disciplined for the overuse. We added another 1G just to be safe. That went even faster than the 2G!!! We are now at 6GB at almost double the rate we went through 2!!!
I have kept a log of the time spent trying to solve this issue -- almost 5 hours of phone time alone. I literally have an AppleCare supervisor in my phone contact list because he is so perplexed!!!! After several Verizon technical support calls, we finally an agent who really wanted to help. She was convinced my daughter's phone had a rogue (malware) virus. Apple said it had to be the hardware. But when we really looked at the metrics -- both of our iPhones AND the iPad all all using data when on wifi, supposedly. We had one month of overage charges refunded, but with the problem not solved (reset both phones to factory settings; exchanged our modem for a new one !!!) I added -- you guessed it -- MORE DATA!!!
I didn't see how Verizon could be guilty of fraud -- after all, something of this magnitude would put the entire company out of business ultimately and it just doesn't make sense. But this is WAY OFF. Further, mid-way through our issue, the data category that was using the most data on my daughter's phone -- "Business Services" -- suddenly disappeared and now the main usage category is "Web Apps". Verizon. Really? It's a poor show.
I'm considering eating the contract termination fee and returning to AT&T. I'm not quick to assume, which is why I've spent months assuming some responsibility for the data, but it's very clear to us now that there is something very illegal happening here.

HT4314 If you use Game Center does it use data charges on your bill?

Can someone tell me if you are playing games on Game Center does it charge on your account as data charges?

This weekend, the AT&T tower near our home failed. We had no AT&T cell service whatsoever. During this time, our home WiFi was always running at 100%. No iMessage would go through, nor could any iMessage be received. Both my and my wife's iPhone 4S were connected to the home WiFi and were used with it. Two things did not work: cell service and iMessage.
I think that iMessage seems to rely on the phone data plan, or at least the cell service must be in range to use it.

The "More Everything Plan" is ruining my life! (and adding random data charges to my bill)

Hello,
I recently changed my data plan a few months ago to the 6 GB Data plan with 2 phones tied to my service when I upgraded my phone to the Samsung Galaxy 5. For the most part my wife and I have been doing pretty good at keeping the our monthly data usage down to the 6 GB. On Nov 4th was I upgraded to the new 10 GB my everything plan and ever since that change, my account has been making RANDOM data charges at all hours of the night! I pulled both my wife's Data Usage report and my own and compared them.
Looking at my wife's data usage below, you can clearly see that there are automated data spikes that her phone went through on the same exact time on different days! Looking at the dates, these spikes did not start to automatically occur until we upgraded our plan on Nov 4th. The same goes for my data usage below. There are multiple days that my phone surged on the same exact time with large spikes of data! These reports were organized by largest "Unbilled Data Usage" spikes.
These spikes SHOULD NOT be occurring and have nothing to do with what apps we have installed our phones. We have both filtered our usage by apps on our phones and they do not add up. What's the point of having a larger data plan, if that data plan just steals MG randomly off your phone for no reason??? Because of these spikes, I have add to pay over $100 in overage fees and in November, I have already had to buy MORE DATA ($20 for 5 GB more) because I was already at 90% of my usage with 2 weeks still to go in the billing cycle! I need actions and not suggestions. I'm not the only one with these problems and this needs to be addressed.
Please help!!!!!
(Wife's Data Usage)
(My Data Usage)

You're right, data usage can be confusion...especially when your response above doesn't make sense.
If data usage is counted in 6 hour blocks, then how in the world did Nov. 5th last 138 hours??? Data was calculated 23 times on 11/5/14 and 14 times on on 11/4. These are just 2 examples of when the data was pulled in in "6 hour blocks of time". Nearly every day in my pulled report this month shows 2 dozen or more times the data was recorded and billed each day. (see below)
Further more, if data usage actually was counted in 6 hour intervals, that still doesn't explain why my phone randomly surged 1.27 GB of data at 5:36 AM in the morning on 11/12/14. Even if this counted data since 11:36 PM the night before on 11/11/14 night, there's no way I would have used this much data! Since I work during the weekdays 9-5, I am already in bed at this time and not using my phone. And it can't be recorded data usage after 5:36 AM, because then what would be the point of having a time stamp in the report? Where was this data coming from??? (see below)
The timing of my spike in data is just way too coincidental of when I upgraded my data to 10 GB earlier this month. If you compare our data usage against other months (when I had 6 GB) we didn't have random spikes like we are seeing now. There is something wrong with the new data plan on our phones, and I really wish someone could clearly point out where these additional charges are coming from. Please have a representative contact me at your earlier convenience.
6 Hour Blocks of Time?
Data pulled at 5:36 AM
Data Spike in the Past Months

Is it possible to print from iPhone 4 on a non wireless printer via use of the USB data / charging cable

Is it possible to print from iPhone 4 on a non wireless printer via use of the USB data / charging cable.

No

Excessive Data from un-opened attachments on POP iPhone Mail

Hi there,
This is my first post so any help would be much appreciated.
I am having problems with the data usage on my iPhone 4S.
Using the Dataman app, I have been able tp pinpoint why my data (again today) jumpes 30mb in one go.
I think its to do with one of my POP mail accounts. Whenever I recieve an email on this account with an attachment, I dont even need to go into the actual email and it will still download every attachment in that mail. What is worse, is that if I dont complete the download and close Mail, when i open up Mail again it will re-download it again! This mean it takes double the data! So today for instance, I noticed 3 emails with attachments enter my POP mailbox (Provider is 1&1 UK). I did'nt open any of the emails, just let the main screen load up. I then looked at dataman and saw the data usage jump up by 10mb. I then closed the Mail app. I then re-opened the Mail app and this time it jumped another 12mb. So I closed it again, and then i opened the Mail app AGAIN and it jumped another 15mb! This is insane! Something is wrong with the data capture here....
For one i didnt open up the emails or attachments - why did it take some much data (58mb for today currently) when all i did was open the mail app three times???? I'm looking into setting up an IMAP account and deleting the POP account - does anyone think this would make a difference?
How can i stop this happening?
Thanks for your help in advance :]

I'm experiencing this as well. My iPhone uploads nearly 20MB every 20 minutes or so on the dot. The only thing that I could think of is that my email has been hanging and not updating to gmail correctly when I delete an email. It will continually try to process deleting the specific deleted email until it times out and tries again 20 minutes later. I have to force quit Mail to get it to stop. I'm not sure if this issue is limited to only gmail, but in all of my google searches, gmail with Apple's mail app (mobile or desktop) are the constant factors that result in excessive cellular data UPLOADS.
To be clear, my excessive data usage is not from downloads, it is solely from uploads!
Now I just need to figure out what is causing it to hang and keep trying to update every 20 minutes.

Can someone explain data charges to me?

Upgraded to a smartphone Samsung Nexus. First Data plan and all. So, what is costing me alot of data when I am at work,home asleep,connected to wifi at home(Xfinity). I am barely on the thing and in three weeks 75% of 1GB is already used. I am not a gamer either. So, any explanation of exactly what data charges are for and help would be greatly appreciated. I am thinking about going back to my old phone and my old plan not this new stuff and share everything plan. Thank you

ac3dc11 wrote:
Thank you to you both in reaching out and trying to help me.
Brian68, I realize to some that might not be much data and maybe I didn't explain my concerns very well. Trying to use the phone for web/games only at home with our wifi via xfinity. Yet the data is in the 19,000's kb (whatever that is) and lower at home using wifi. It also shows data usage when I am asleep or at work totally not using the phone. Again not techno so also need additional help on your ideas regarding background data off and your app suggestions on where and how to do that if you can please. Thank you.
Ann154, Thank you for your continued help. I have done what you have suggested so far. Anything else comes to mind just let me know. Thank you.
Is 19000 kb the SPEED or the amount of data used? At any rate if you data is being used when you are not using the phone it could be you have background data on and also you could have you apps on auto update. Make sure you shut off auto update on apps and also set it to where apps only update over wi-fi.

My iphone 5s is using excessive data, how can i fix this?

my iphone 5s is using excessive data, how can i fix this?

What are you using the data for?
Go Settings>Cellular>Use Cellular Data For>Turn off the unwanted apps that use your Data.

It's my understanding that when traveling overseas, all i have to do is turn off cellular data to avoid high data charges.

it's my understanding that when traveling overseas, all i have to do is turn off cellular data to avoid high data charges.

With Airplane Mode you will not receive phone calls. If you are just worried about Data Charges then just go to Settings>Cellular>Data 'Off' This may also turn your iMessage off such that all your iMessages even in a WiFi environment go out as Text Messages. If you still want to use iMessage from Apple device to Apple device in a WiFi network then go to Settings>Messages> and turn it back on after you have set Cellular Data to Off. Ckuan is correct though about having some per minute received or outgoing call and text charges. For one example, if you were traveling in Canada but didn't have a Canada Plan you would pay about 89 cents per minute and 50 cents per send / receive Text.

Excessive data charges

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for