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

Question

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.

Answer 1

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.