GPRS may shoot up your bill to thousands

[Guest baron_?]

Just to share my recent experience. Beware of sites that are made to recconnect by itself. Last Oct 31, when I was bound to San Miguel Bulacan for All Souls, I connected to the site www.pncc.net/pncc/pncc_north.asp to check on live update of the traffic situation at north expressway. Though it has been my way of quitting apps after surfing the net with my SAP, I asked my sister to use my SAP and connect to the site. After a couple of days, I was asked by my officemate if I were ablt ot connect to the site coz he incurred about 3,900 unbilled. In my case, it's 1,700! We cound out that the ASP site has meta an instruction to the browser to reconnect after 10 mins).. Also, for Plany 800 subscribers, you are not protected by the 1,800 limit in GPRS as SMART admits.

If ever you connect to any site, just remember to quit the app using SP TaskManager Free Mem or other utilities that free up apps in memory.

Always check if there's a small G near the signal bar. It should show up if your not using GPRS.

Right now, I'm waiting for my bill so I could file a dispute letter so I could get a refund of my money.. hopefully..

[Guest spacecowboy6982]

Ouch, this could be a sore one ! Let us know how you get on.

spacecowboy

[Guest JDimeRolla10]

Good luck on the refund. Had a similar problem with both my Globe and Smart bills. Until now they haven't resolved it (fortunately, I convinced them that I didn't use it and it might be a computer glitch) and I told them I won't pay for it until they can tell me who used it :)

[Guest grifter]

better check your unbilled usage every now and then.

that's what i do to make sure i don't over use.

[Guest sonborj]

another way for Smart to earn money.. they should be more consumer friendly.

[Guest baron_?]

@JDimeRolla10

What you did is right, not to pay them till the disputed amount is clarified. I actually had that verified with NTC. They told to me furnish them with the dispute letter and inform them if action had been taken.

It is actually not enough for SMART to just make their customers rely on the small "G" sign, for us to know if connection is still alive. The SAP units should be able to handle such "autorefresh connections" so as to avoid unjustifiable GPRS billings. Better yet, if the SAP is done downloading the page, it should not entertain meta instructions from ASP sites for reconnection.

If ever this is not yet possible, then in SMART's site, there should be a clear warning and instruction on how to avoid this from happening.

[Guest pyke]

another that i suspect is,i might be incurring charges also when someone sends me an mms.dont you notice,the little "G" is up and you can check through Imeter or even just through call register that you've comsumed some kilobytes downloading the mms sent to you.i dont know,but that's what i think.