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!

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I am on the Vodafone network and housebound. My iPhone 4s is connected to internet via wifi.
I have been incurring huge charges from Vodafone as a result of "mobile data downloads" ...which always occur at midnight when I am connected by wifi
I have had my phone looked at in a Vodafone store and they indicate that there doesn't appear to be any untoward apps on my phone.
I suspected the culprit to be the "Songpop" app and posted a message on their forum.
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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.
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Ellipsis 7 tablet - drops wi-fi and goes to mobile data w/o telling you, and for no reason?

I don't totally hate my Ellipsis 7 tablet. It does have a nice, bright screen, and it does have a fairly fast processor.
This is where the compliments stop.
1.) It's glitchy. As others have stated, icons do seem to disappear.
2.) It seems to "lose communication" with my high-end Sandisk micro-sd card (that has no other problems when used in my smartphone.)
3.) The battery life could be a lot better - you will charge it every day, even with minimal use.
but my biggest problem with this tablet (which I got from my local Verizon store) is it's "sneaky behavior" with mobile data. I am nearly convinced that these devices are designed, intentionally, to use up your mobile data whenever possible, even when solid wi-fi is available.
Have any of you Verizon Ellipsis 7 users, that use these primarily at home with wi-fi available, noticed a rather large increase in the mobile data being used?
This is sort of long, so I appreciate everyone who takes the time to read this...
Here's my scenario; which I can duplicate.
I live in a place with 2 strong wi-fi networks available. The tablet accesses both of them with no problem. Speed tests show 10Mbps download and 0.768 Mbps upload, the speed we pay for.
One night, I get the text messages from Verizon that I'm close to using all my mobile data. (which I appreciate) But I'd been getting so many texts, emails, etc., that day I didn't look to see what the alert was. My bad! So, I'd gone over and approved $10 to upgrade with one more GB of data. I figured it was a fluke; that somehow I had turned off my wi-fi, or it had gone down, or somehow something happened that made the tablet switch over to mobile data.
...but I was watching more closely now...
less than 24 hours later, I'm getting those messages again! I'd used one GB in less than 24 hours??? So I called Verizon, and we went through the normal putting limits on the device, etc., so it couldn't happen again.
So then, I asked him the simple question? When not 1, but 2, strong wi-fi signals are available, why would this device switch over to mobile data, WITHOUT letting you know???
He couldn't answer that. He transferred me to someone else that was "higher" in techincal support. She was a sweet girl, and really wanted to help me, but she never understood my problem. At one point I said to her, "Look, it's simple. These devices always default to wi-fi if available. What would make them disconnect from wi-fi and go to mobile data instead?" Her answer was that she needed to look up if a tablet was supposed to connect to wi-fi first... uh, OK.
At the end of a very frustrating call, she offered to send me a box to ship it back to Verizon in. They would then decide to repair or replace it. I would be without a tablet for a minimum of two weeks. I said Thanks but No Thanks, I would just disable mobile data entirely. The lady I spoke with did not seem pleased with my decision, but what could she do? And we ended the call.
So, I'm still trying to figure out what is making this thing kick over to mobile data (remember I just shut mobile data off entirely before I hung up with Verizon) and I was currently connected to an external bluetooth speaker (which shouldn't have anything to do with anything, I realize), when I started a video on YouTube.
Now, mind you, I was ALREADY showing connected to a strong wi-fi network.
And up comes a dialog popup, asking me to turn the wi-fi back on, even though I would incur additional charges!
BUSTED, VERIZON!
This message doesn't come up when it tries to switch over from wi-fi to mobile data unless you have completely shut off mobile data.
I only mention that I was connected to an external bluetooth speaker because it is the only way (SO FAR) that I have been able to duplicate this "silent switchover" repeatedly.
If I'm on Youtube first, not connected to my bluetooth external speaker, the device will stay on my wi-fi network when I pause the video, connect to the bluetooth speaker, and then restart the video.
If I'm already connected to the external bluetooth speaker, and then open a browser window or youtube video, the device will attempt to change its connection from wi-fi to mobile data. There is no reason for this!
Yes, yes... I realize that being connected to an external bluetooth device should have absolutely nothing to do with whether the tablet should keep its wi-fi connection or switch to mobile data...
except that it does! And there may be other circumstances that I haven't found yet... I don't know, but I'm watching!
At the end of the day, ANY DEVICE THAT IS GOING TO SWITCH FROM A WI-FI NETWORK TO MOBILE DATA, FOR ANY REASON, SHOULD TELL YOU IT'S GOING TO SWITCH, AND LET YOU DECIDE TO ALLOW THAT CHANGE OR NOT, especially when there is NO REASON for the device to switch in the first place. In the same household are my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and husband's Galaxy S5. They never exhibit this behavior, and yes, we use internet on our phones at home rather frequently.
Watch your mobile data folks...
Oh, and the Verizon lady called back about 30 minutes later... asking me again to agree to send my tablet in. I explained to her that I could now duplicate the problem. I told her that it would be easy enough for them to check and see if all devices are doing it (which I'm guessing they all do! there's not enough memory to download any apps, so I doubt it's that...) I said that with the millions of Ellipsis 7 devices they have, someone in tech support can grab one and try it. Still no luck, and she still wanted me to send it back and be without a tablet for 2 weeks or more. I declined.
Anyway, if you've read this far, I thank you! I would like opinions as to whether you think this should be happening or not, and whether you have had this happen to you or not with this tablet. Thank you for your time!

Hello this is happening to us also (minus the Bluetooth speaker). We can't figure out what is causing the data usage. I turned off mobile data as soon s I activated the device, and got the message that unless I am connected to WiFi.....(that is exactly what I wanted). We watched Netflix for about three hours, then the alerts started. Like you we have many devices connected and never used over 2GB now all of a sudden we have used it in a matter of hours. My husband called Verizon and got the usual doubting Thomas response. I understand that they don't know my device settings. So over the phone we check all the settings and turned off every possible culprit eating up the data and end the call. By now I have purchased another gig for the month! Assured we are NOT using mobile data, we continue on the IE path to bliss. HA! A few hours later I check the mobile data usage on the Verizon website and that darn thing is still using data. After two more phone calls and two VERY uneventful trips to the local store we were told to take out the sim card. This has stopped the data usage, but it defeats the purpose of having the data plan. I could have just stuck with my Surface. Verizon sent us a new sim card. Its been installed and I have set my homepage to Verizon mobile data usage (just kidding) but I am on that site a lot. I am surprised at the number of complaints about this device. When we called the Verizon support acted as though this was the first time they had heard about this. Loved your post, you should write for a living.

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Thank you ProfessorPhone. I'll try your link, though as mentioned in a different thread's reply to you I had fallen for Telstra's emailed statement that "If you have any suggestions, we'd love to hear them - just let us know on our CrowdSupport forum at telstra.com.au/ideas." Telstra once again doubles my workload. Thank you also Lunaseruka for your well-intended reply. However there being no way to "cap" data was precisely why I submitted the post (to "Ideas"). As for the app, I'm the odd-man-out in my family in that I prefer to use my phone as a phone and choose to do my online work through my home broadband - easier (for me) and cheaper. I assume that I can achieve similar results using the "My Account" website. However, I object to having to spend time constantly monitoring the data usage of several family mobiles, then having to request data barring each time one approaches its limit, then having to remember to request access resumption at the beginning of each bill cycle. Technology was supposed to make life easier and save us time!

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