Unaccounted high data use on Orange C500 - advice requested please.

[Guest Chumley]

A hopeful attempt to try and get to the bottom of this recent situation as I have just received my Orange paper bill and my total data use for the last month (May 2006) was just over 70 Megabytes, making the bill over

Edited June 8, 2006 by Chumley

[Guest Lady Marmalade]

Wow, that is super high usage! :)

I used to work for Orange and did have one customer who was being billed for three times the amount of data they used. The only reason we had any idea that our billing was wrong was because their corporate data system had its own APN (so it could be tracked) and they had a usage meter on the device.

...even from within Orange I couldn't get a satisfactory answer from the Billing Team so put credits on their account instead to offset a higher data bundle that would cover it. :)

That doesn't help but you're probably not the only person being billed too much.

As you say, the real issue is that you want Orange to prove in some way that you used that amount of data. The way I see it, they can't (not logged as a call etc.) so I would write a formal complaint letter and probably see what usage freeware there is out there. I know they won't use that as evidence in the future but at least YOU would know for sure.

Lady M

[Guest Tech]

formal complaints dont do jack with orange unfortunately from my experience.

[Guest Chumley]

Wow, that is super high usage! :)

I used to work for Orange and did have one customer who was being billed for three times the amount of data they used. The only reason we had any idea that our billing was wrong was because their corporate data system had its own APN (so it could be tracked) and they had a usage meter on the device.

...even from within Orange I couldn't get a satisfactory answer from the Billing Team so put credits on their account instead to offset a higher data bundle that would cover it. :)

That doesn't help but you're probably not the only person being billed too much.

As you say, the real issue is that you want Orange to prove in some way that you used that amount of data. The way I see it, they can't (not logged as a call etc.) so I would write a formal complaint letter and probably see what usage freeware there is out there. I know they won't use that as evidence in the future but at least YOU would know for sure.

Lady M

Thanks for the reply..

It's potentially quite frightening that this could happen without a feeling (by me) that I was actually using this amount of data. If it was on my M5000 I could much easier believe it, but even so, not this high.

I honestly feel like my data use must have been hijacked some how. I simply cannot reconcile this at all.

Update so far:- I wrote a formal complaint letter to Orange (Bristol address) received a (voicemail) message to ring a woman at Orange earlier in the week - please call her back on 0870.... - well no thanks that'll end up costing a decent sum as I would expect to be on the phone for quite a while so I didn't bother immediately (I'm not particularly a tight wad, I just don't like feeling like I am being taken advantage of).

Anyway the woman rang again a few hours later. I explained the situation and she said she would send me the detailed data itemisation bill 1st class (haven't received it yet). In addition (she did sound quite understanding and sympathetic rather than matter of fact or job's worth approach!) she offered me a

[Guest chucky.egg]

A while ago I had a problem where my device (a WM2003SE C500) was constantly sending data.

That was caused by a combination of applications (primarily a registry change from SmartEase, which kept GPRS connected).

You might want to undo any recent registry changes and see if that helps, but TBH I'm guessing a bit here...