Verizon billing for data overages that never happened?

Question

I just switched a few months ago from AT&T to Verizon.  Heard customer service and billing practices were better, and was willing to pay a bit more per month to get it.  Now, three months in ... I have a billing and customer service nightmare.  I have an apparent "hiccupping" overage charge -- Verizon is telling me every couple days that I have used another 1G over my limit for the month -- yet my usage is no different than it was with AT&T -- with one exception.  On ONE day this month, I used my phone to send myself a number of photos from my phone to a non-phone connected email
And I streamed about 5 min. of video on the phone.  That's all.  I was notified I went over.   Very nice to know, I thought ... I appreciated the notification and the ability to buy another 1G at $10 for the month rather than a $15 overage charge.  So far, so good.  I also learned from that, and never did it again (emailed photos from my phone to another email nor streamed videos).  I don't listen to music on my phone nor have ever used it in any other way to use a lot of data.  When I had AT&T I never used more than 1G total, but I put myself on a 2G plan with Verizon, just in case, because I had come close to the 1G limit a few times with AT&T.   Now, the nightmare.  Since my one day of overage, and purchase of an additional gig, within a few days I received a message that I used up the extra gig already!  Then I have, every few days, received a text message from Verizon stating I used my "second" extra gig, then my "third"  and now it is up to my "sixth"!!!   I have no clue what is happening, though I have read on line that others have had this problem with Verizon, even when no one was using the phone, and the phone was turned off for a week!   I called Verizon, and all I got was "it couldn't be our problem", "you should use your apps differently," "you should turn off imessaging", "you should only use wifi when you can" etc. etc.  And when I said I'm not doing ANYTHING differently from when I had only 1G with AT&T, I got a snotty "we're not working for AT&T, we don't know what AT&T does" over and over.  I can't imagine that no one whatsoever at Verizon has no idea how their data usage billing practices differs or is the same from AT&T and why AT&T would charge me for less than 1G and Verizon would charge me for more than 6Gs for the exact same type of usage.   I asked to speak to supervisors and got arguments -- "they are just going to ask you the same thing."  PLEASE let me speak to a supervisor, I said.... "you still have to answer these questions..."  REALLY, Verizon?? 

Answer 1

    aeblock,
Nothing like watching a bill go up and not knowing where it is coming from! Let’s get that to be more manageable. There is an app that I use to see all apps that use data including 3rd party apps you may have downloaded. This lets you know everything that might be using data and how much it is using. Once you know you can disable data or uninstall the application if that option is not available. I find that very useful. You can check that out here: http://bit.ly/1mJfoyE .
From what you have written I am under the impression that you believe there is an error in the reported data usage on our end. Customer service can submit a request to compare the information reported to billing against actual data used. If there is any error we would be happy to adjust it for you. You can do that by contacting customer service: http://bit.ly/yN1P80 or send me a direct message and I will have that reviewed for you: http://vz.to/1v0uLEw .
BrianP_VZW
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