3k of Vodafone data usage

[Guest stoddy1980]

Hiya all,

I am a Vodafone user on 800min/500 text and £7.50 data bundle tariff and I have this month been hit with a bill for £2800 for data charges! They have cut off my line without notifying me whatsoever and they are demanding £1500 of it now. Even though I have paid all bills to date.

They say that I racked up 500MB worth of data in under 12 hours last week, I dont see how this can be for this amount and also how this can be fair?

Does anyone have any advice?!

Thanks

Stoddy

[Guest Confucious]

OK.

Vodafone seem good at this.

Am I right in thinking you are using your Vario? Which is GPRS only?

According to http://www.mobile-phones-uk.org.uk/gprs.htm

Data transfer is relatively slow: 14.4 kbps (kilobits per second) for GSM 1800 networks (Orange and T-Mobile) and 9.6 kbps for GSM 900 networks (Vodafone and O2).

500Mb in 12 hours = 94.81kbps by my reckoning so is therefore IMPOSSIBLE! Unless I've got my sums wrong (a possibility) then they have!

500 * 1024 / 12hours /60 mins / 60 secs X 8 bits = 94.81 kilobits / second.

Ask them to prove your usage!

Good luck

[Guest Stuart_f]

And unless you had it plugged in the battery would be flat long before the 12 hours would be up.

[Guest stoddy1980]

I have a N95 now, so Im assuming that on 3G, a few hundred megs is possible. What I cannot understand is that for browsing and downloading a few emails with no ridiculous size attachments how I came to this figure.

Im annoyed that they have cut me off without any prior warning (I have a pregnant wife due in May) so not ideal and im annoyed that there were no measures in place to stop/warn me once I reached this 'cap'.

[Guest tsutton]

It sounds like they made a mistake. Do not pay for it and ask for breakdown of bill.

[Guest Confucious]

T-Mobsent me and my brother a text (both phones were in my name) when he used a lot of data asking us to phone them. We both did and they sorted it (he had changed packages and they had removed W'n'W std amd not added the pro!) but on W'nW it's a FUP so you don't pay if you go over anyway!

[Guest stoddy1980]

Well I spoke with Vodafone this afternoon and requested a breakdown of charges. They advise that they cannot send me this over e-mail due to data protection, they also inform that they cannot run anything from their system to send to me via post as it has not been run on the billing cycle yet. It runs from 1st to end of month and bill is produced on approx 6th of each month.

I cannot access internet billing as it needs to send a security code to my phone and this is barred...

In addition they have changed the amount that they say I have used from when I originally spoke to them (I will not give out names here). Initially I was told id used approx 500MB now they are saying 1.5GB. They say this was run up within a 23 hour period...

I have read various stories, (a gent that had 9k of charges and had it overturned and another gent who had 27k of charges who had his reduced to £35.....

I had a read on the Voda site its interesting to find that if you go on the mobile broadband plan £15 for 3GB a month (double what I used for £15!!) if you exceed this limit you will be charged at £15 per GB....

Something else I noticed is that other operators have measures in place to warn you or stop you if you exceed the limit. Especially if you are a first time 'offender' I believe this should be normal and fair practice.

All interesting points and probably could go on. This seems to be quite an issue at the moment. Im just rounding up all my info then I plan to seek professional advice.

[Guest Confucious]

I can only imagine what you are going through - not nice.

Hope you get it sorted. There is no way they should be allowed to let it get to this situation and put you through this. I'm sure you will sort it OK in the end but you must be worried sick at the moment.

Good luck!

[Guest Dr Who]

You have my heartfelt sympathies. In this day and age it is UTTERLY ridiculous to even threaten you with those bill charges. It costs no more for you to have used that data than someone on a £15 package, as you rightly point out. If they can PROVE the data was used by your handset then they should charge you a capped figure of, say, £15. However I would contest that it is actually impossible for that much data to be used by a handset in 23 hours - there is NO software I can think of that would eat that much. What phone do you have and what browser were you using? Even if you had the phone stuck on refreshing a single web page constantly I would be surprised if you could chew through that much data. The only realistic way would be if you were using it as a modem but since they can detect its use as a modem then they would have to prove this. I do remember this cropping up before and I think the operator backed down as they couldn't prove the data usage was 'real'. Hope you get it sorted.

Have to say this is precisely the sort of treatment that caused me to leave Orange when I was with them for the customer service nirvana that is TMob.

[Guest Confucious]

Dr Who has summed up my thoughts better than I could. I agree with everything he said.

[Guest hotphil]

Well I spoke with Vodafone this afternoon and requested a breakdown of charges. They advise that they cannot send me this over e-mail due to data protection, they also inform that they cannot run anything from their system to send to me via post as it has not been run on the billing cycle yet. It runs from 1st to end of month and bill is produced on approx 6th of each month.

I cannot access internet billing as it needs to send a security code to my phone and this is barred...

I'd give them another call and insist on speaking to the duty manager and explain that the onus is on them to prove that kind of abnormal usage. There's nothing in the Data Protection Act that would prohibit them from sending you information about your account. Don't stand for that kind of twaddle from them. I would contact your bank too and get them to return any Direct Debits the operator intends to take using the "Payer disputes charge" code they have available (means that the operator won't get even more wound up that you've cancelled the DD) but they won't be able to take money from your account.

Edited March 28, 2008 by hotphil

[Guest stoddy1980]

I'd give them another call and insist on speaking to the duty manager and explain that the onus is on them to prove that kind of abnormal usage. There's nothing in the Data Protection Act that would prohibit them from sending you information about your account. Don't stand for that kind of twaddle from them. I would contact your bank too and get them to return any Direct Debits the operator intends to take using the "Payer disputes charge" code they have available (means that the operator won't get even more wound up that you've cancelled the DD) but they won't be able to take money from your account.

I escalated my query to the call centre manager when I was liasing with them for the 1st time and I made no absolutely any progress whats so ever.

Without seeing some sort of breakdown of costs things can't really move forward.

Dr Who, I had my Nokia in use as a modem for a short period of time, but this was for a few hours at the most and this was just general browsing, definately nothing that would amount to 1.5GB of downloads in that short space of time, I would be chuffed at downloading that amount of data in a few hours from my fixed broadband connection! Again until I see a breakdown, I cannot move forward.

Someone that was in a similar situation and had theirs resolved suggested to me that I email a complaint to the Vodafone CEO, Customer relations dept, Customer services and cc in, citizens advice, OFCOM, watchdog, trading standards and my local press, detailing everything that had happened. They advised me to put in there an offer of them moving me onto their USB dongle 3GB data plan at £15 a month to reach an amicable agreement.

Thank you for your advice re the direct debit Phil, I will call my bank straight away.

What are peoples views on this?

[Guest stoddy1980]

I'd give them another call and insist on speaking to the duty manager and explain that the onus is on them to prove that kind of abnormal usage. There's nothing in the Data Protection Act that would prohibit them from sending you information about your account. Don't stand for that kind of twaddle from them. I would contact your bank too and get them to return any Direct Debits the operator intends to take using the "Payer disputes charge" code they have available (means that the operator won't get even more wound up that you've cancelled the DD) but they won't be able to take money from your account.

I escalated my query to the call centre manager when I was liasing with them for the 1st time and I made no absolutely any progress whats so ever.

Without seeing some sort of breakdown of costs things can't really move forward.

Dr Who, I had my Nokia in use as a modem for a short period of time, but this was for a few hours at the most and this was just general browsing, definately nothing that would amount to 1.5GB of downloads in that short space of time, I would be chuffed at downloading that amount of data in a few hours from my fixed broadband connection! Again until I see a breakdown, I cannot move forward.

Someone that was in a similar situation and had theirs resolved suggested to me that I email a complaint to the Vodafone CEO, Customer relations dept, Customer services and cc in, citizens advice, OFCOM, watchdog, trading standards and my local press, detailing everything that had happened. They advised me to put in there an offer of them moving me onto their USB dongle 3GB data plan at £15 a month to reach an amicable agreement.

Thank you for your advice re the direct debit Phil, I will call my bank straight away.

What are peoples views on this?

[Guest Dr Who]

Dr Who, I had my Nokia in use as a modem for a short period of time, but this was for a few hours at the most and this was just general browsing, definately nothing that would amount to 1.5GB of downloads in that short space of time, I would be chuffed at downloading that amount of data in a few hours from my fixed broadband connection! Again until I see a breakdown, I cannot move forward.

Hmmm, that muddies the waters somewhat, but like you say it *should* be nigh on impossible to chew through that much data. Having said that you are quite sure you don't have a virus on the PC in question? If you were silently part of a bot-net, then you could be upping and downing large volumes of data.

All you can do is follow Phils advice to prevent them simply extracting £2K from your bank and putting the onus on you to have it returned and ask for a breakdown of the traffic and sites visited and hopefully use this to prove that you were not the origin of the data.

[Guest stoddy1980]

I had the issue resolved with Vodafone, we reached a mutual agreement.

Thanks for everyones help :D

[Guest Confucious]

Are you going to share the agreement with us? Did you pay the 3 grand?

[Guest Christopher Woods]

I had the issue resolved with Vodafone, we reached a mutual agreement.

Thanks for everyones help :D

So cmon, what agreement did you reach and how did you go about it? You can't leave us on tenterhooks!

[Guest hotphil]

I'd put money on part of whatever settlement agreement was reached was that he can't talk about it :D

[Guest furby]

What happened? What happened? :D