Large data usage bill on Web'n'Walk!

[Guest Swampie]

I just noticed online that my T-Mobile phone bill for this month was about £61, when normally it's £16-£17. I'm on W'n'W 200 with Friends and Relatives discount, so pay about £16 a month base, with some texts/out of bunble minutes. Only once have I come close to my 40MB allowance (it's the old W'n'W I have) and that was on holiday for a week monitoring eBay for a sale I was making (at 250kb+ a load, it goes quickly).

So imagine my suprise when I see I've used 44.25MB in excess of my 40MB allowance - so 84.25MB!!!! I looked at my itemisation, and I see 31MB on Sat 3rd Feb, 9MB on Sun 4th Feb and 29MB on Mon 5th Feb. Total of 69MB in 3 days. Considering I was at home on Saturday (so WiFi), church on Sunday (so unlikely to use the phone), and at work on Monday (so use work internet), I cannot explain such high data usage.

Only internet using apps I use are:

Pocket Internet Explorer (mostly)

Opera (uncommon)

Push email via Exchange

TomTom Navigator traffic updates (only when driving - which wasn't that weekend)

Sometime in the last month I found my phone had run down unusually quickly. Can't remember when - was a weekday as I had to try charging it at work. Might have been the Tueday 6th - no idea.

Any ideas what could have happened? Might it have been a webpage left on auto-refresh? Banner ads which keep loading? I've no definite answer. Is there anything I can do to stop auto-refresh in PocketIE? I want to avoid this happening again!!!

Anyway - shocked me to have a bill £50 more than usual, especially considering it's usually more like £16 normally. I spoke to T-Mobile CS who weren't able to do anything about the charge (if it originated from my device, then I guess it's only fair to be billed for it) - but they did offer switching my to Flext25+WnW, which gives me up to 300 minutes per month and unlimited data. I do very occasionally (far less than 1 day per month on a 30 minute train journey each day) use my phone as a modem, and hence wanted to keep my WnW 200 plan which gave me 40MB of data, but without the restriction of 'no modem usage'. But after this, I'd rather the option of never having to worry about data coming from my device again.

Following from this, I think I'll never go for a limited data bundle again! Glad I had 40MB, else bill would have been even higher!!

Thanks

D

[Guest jimbouk]

Have you set your push email to download attachments and did you receive some large ones over those days?

I have mine set to only auto download attachments that are less than 25kb. You can download larger ones manually.

As long as you close PIE, it shouldnt auto refresh without you knowing about it.

Also are you sure you didnt use 3g instead of Wifi by mistake?

Edited February 26, 2007 by jimbouk

[Guest Swampie]

Push email settings are:

Download the past 1 week

Download size limit 5KB

Include file attachments only if smaller than 10KB

I tend to get no more than 10-20 emails a day on that address.

Also syncs Calendar (only syncs last 1 month) and Tasks

What do you mean by 'close'. Click the minimise button on the top right, or go into the memory tab and exit the application? Certainly if it's minimised, when you click it, it still runs, and when I open it again it's at the same page I was on before.

Little chance of using GPRS rather than WiFi. I always check for the connected WiFi icon before using it (to avoid using GPRS) but also, it would be very slow and I'd have noticed it. And finally, at non-3G GPRS rates (it's a MDA Vario), how long would it take to interactively (ie. watching and waiting) to use 69MB? I'd have given up by then! It must have happened pretty much continuously whilst I was asleep.

I can only assume that it was on auto-refresh, and as WiFi turns off when the device is asleep (quick press on power button) yet GPRS still makes connections, when I turned it 'off', it then switched to GPRS, and ran up the bill.

D

[Guest jimbouk]

Any RSS feeds on auto update?

[Guest Swampie]

Nope, don't use RSS on it.

Just general web browsing in PIE - not every day, and not for long periods - occasionally using Opera if a page doesn't look right - but not usually.

Push email with work Exchange (10 - 20 emails per day, rarely with attachments, and don't usually manually download them)

Manual sync on POP3 personal email - rarely do it, especially at home as I have my PC there)

TomTom Navigator traffic updates

That's my usual usage of the device.

Feb 07 - 69MB

Jan 07 - 14MB

Dec 06 - 7MB

Nov 06 - 8MB

Oct 06 - 40MB (9p out of bundle data charge) - this was the week away on holiday doing lots of browsing

Sep 06 - 34MB (not sure why this was high - about 9MB was on a day I was at Silverstone)

Aug 06 - 9MB

Jul 06 - 4MB

Jun 06 - 5MB

May 06 - 3MB

Apr 06 - 7MB

Mar 06 - 0.05MB (start of contract, 2 day bill)

So you can see I normally have good control over my data usage, usually less than 10MB per month. Very strange.

D

Edited February 26, 2007 by Swampie

[Guest Swampie]

Well, after speaking to a (UK based) CS person who, whilst pleasant and tried to be helpful, couldn't offer any explanation or solution (apart from suggesting I move to an unlimited tariff, which I've done), I emailed them to see whether I could get any more information about the problem.

Today I got a phone call from T-Mobile about my email. Again, couldn't appear to provide any credible explanation (apart from asking about TomTom which she claimed wasn't email or browsing but streaming and therefore may now be billed?) she did, at the end of the call, offer a £25 goodwill credit to my account - which I accepted. I believe the data did originate from my device - why I don't know - but effectively I'm only £20 out of pocket, rather than the £45 I was expecting.

So, kudos all round to T-Mobile for a.) suggesting I move to a better value plan, b.) phoning me about my email and c.) providing > 50% discount on the charges as goodwill.