BlackBerry

[ratmanhk]

Got back from China in Feb and according to my bill, apparently on Sunday Feb 20th at 0.00am I downloaded 164MB of data and on Monday Feb 21st at 0.00am I downloaded 243MB of data.

The annoying thing is while I was away I couldn't get any new emails or surf the net like I used to be able to on my old 8900. I used to use the 8900 on all my trips to China, get all emails, send emails, search Google, look at news, share prices etc. I would never go over my limit and never got any data roaming charges when I get back from my trips.

My usual usage is between 30MB and 40MB per month. How can I have possibly used 407MB in 2 days ?? My phone doesn't allow video and I have no Apps. More importantly and the point I keep making to Vodafone is that I received none of this data.

Even my Virgin 50MB Broadband at home can only download 6MB per second..... how can my Blackberry Torch download 243MB per second when in China?? Impossible.

I have spoken to 20 people at Vodafone and everyone just tells me I can't argue with the data they have received and I must have used this amount of data at those times, even though it's not actually possible.

Any help appreciated...

Vodafone customer close to the edge ..... 

[thmsnmg]

The data used throughout the day is reported at midnight, it doesn't mean that you used it all at midnight itself.

[ratmanhk]

I thought that might be the case but that's not what the Vodafone Customer Service people are telling me. They also say they can't tell me what kind of data it is. Email, Internet Browsing, Phone Updates etc ??

They have told me to speak to Blackberry but I'm not the Blackberry customer in my opinion Vodafone are. I am renting the phone from Vodafone under contract and they should help their customer (Me) to get the information from Blackberry.

Moreover, the usage is just insanely high. If someone challenged me to use 243MB in a day I wouldn't know where to start. You tube? Appears I don't have the correct Flash Player anyway.

[ratmanhk]

I wonder if there is anyway of getting information from Vodafone on how much it costs them to provide the data ? I know you can get data bundles with Vodafone Business. £70/Month for 300MB anywhere in the world. Guess it would have cost them £5.00 to supply me with the data. I spend £150/month with Vodafone and have done for 5 years and they don't seem to care. 

[Dave]

Hi ratmanhk,

That certainly is a large bill!

The charges would generally show at midnight as tallied for the day, as has been suggested, although our systems do show the physical size of each data session.

If the customer services guys have already taken a look to see if anything is out of place then I'm not sure how much there is to find, but I'll pop you an email so we can have a look anyway.

In the meantime, can you confirm you didn't try streaming media or messaging services at all, or regular updates and notifications to any apps or features such as social networks? These kinds of applications can be very data intensive.

Please reply back to the email and we'll take a look.

Dave

eForum Team

[ratmanhk]

Hi Dave,

When I get your email I will send a scanned copy of the part of the bill which I am contesting.

One session was for just over 143MB.

100% didn't try any streaming media, no BB Messenger, I only have standard Apps installed and never go on Facebook or and other Feeds. Didn't receive an email outside of our office Wifi and couldn't get on the internet.

I will wait for your email.

Rob

[ratmanhk]

Might as well show everyone my bill ... makes good reading.

[EddyOS]

You weren't tethering a laptop to the phone were you? Just a suggestion, saw the thread title and had to take a look!

[JohnA]

Looking at the bill you've posted it maybe worth noting that the China Mobile usage would have been on their 2G network as you can't use their 3G network. The Chinese government specified that China Mobile had to use TD-SCDMA which is incompatible with WCDMA as used by us (and China Unicom).

Now while 243MB a day isn't impossible on 2G (particularly EDGE) it's certainly good going. I'm not sure your battery would have stood up to it.

[ratmanhk]

It's funny you mention the whole 3G and 2G thing, nobody at Vodafone has been able to tell this info. Also with my old Blackberry 8900 it always flashed up "Edge" and I never had any data usage problems.

The internet is so slow over there that I've never bothered to use the browser on the phone. I used to sometimes check football scores, I would click onto the bookmark and put the phone down for 5 minutes. On my Torch is simply said "please contact your provider".

The more I talk to people about this and the more I speak to Vodafone it's clear that I have been completely shafted. They simply say that I used this data because some screen somewhere says so but some people I have spoken to also agree that it would have been nearly impossible to do this even if I could have access to the internet and receivng emails.

To put the whole thing into perspective. When I had my 8900 I once used Google Maps to navigate from South China to a factory in Hangzhou which is a 7 hours drive. Had it on the whole time. Checked my account when I got back and I was charged £5.00 for going over the data limit. This time I stuck my phone in our office because it basically was of no use to me at all during the day (nobody calling because of time zone difference and emails and browser not working). 2 days later I'd used 320MB of data and been charged £1,000.00.  Nobody can explain this to me.

Vodafone have told me to speak to Blackberry .. how stupid can you get. 

Ring ring, ring ring.

"Good Morning Blackberry"

"Hi Blackberry, it's Robin"

"Who?"

"Robin. I've got a data roaming problem".

"Bye!!".

Beeeeeeeeppppppppppp.

[ratmanhk]

OTELO have had my case for nearly a month now and I have heard nothing. Ombudsman. Useful.

[RobinM]

I found 'Consumer Direct' really helpful in the past. I wrote to them and they got back to me within 30 minutes!

The supplied about 2 pages of my rights as a consumer and actions I could take (not a generic letter, but one written specifically for my case).

Their closing statement basically said.... try these things, if you get no justice, get back and we will kick as$ on a biblical level!

You have OFCOM as well.

[ratmanhk]

What I can't get anyone at Vodafone to explain is the bill itself. I have attached it to an earlier post and if you look at it I get charged £735.00 for using 140MB and then in another session below I use 103MB and get charged nothing??? The same on the day before.

Maybe they charge the total amount on the top and then itemise below, if this is the case on the Monday when I was supposed to have used 243MB the charge should be £715 not £735. The day before it should have been £264 not £285.00. The charge really should be £0.00 because the data never reached my handset but that's another sto

[shaji007]

that is just insane and more so vodafone HAVE to give you on some location on what has gone towards

they provide the internet services they should know where the services have gone to BUT JESUS £700 for 142MB?

im sure if you looked properly my friend you could get decent legal help on this! god i cry if i go over 100 on my contract bills and i have 3 contract phones lol  

[shaji007]

also its a blackberry phone 

them things are just pure pile of poo 

[RobinM]

---

shaji007 wrote:

 BUT JESUS £700 for 142MB?

---

I know it is CRAZY! I got stung for 96 quid for 15MB when I went to the Carrabean. What happens is that every network that your data uses to get 'to and from' your phone stings you (at their prices). So being on the other side of the world like China, god knows how many networks charged him repeatedly for the same MB's.

[ratmanhk]

Well the saga continues. Vodafone have sent me an email telling me my thread will be removed because the EForum isn't the correct platform for discussing this issue and that it needs to be dealt with by customer services.

My reply to this is that I have been asking customer services and other departments at Vodafone how on earth in 2 days I used 10 times the amount of data I would have normally used in 1 month ???????? 

I have been told by 4 people in Carphone Warehouse that this is simply impossible with the way my phone is set up and the only way this could have happened is if the phone had been tethered to a laptop and if I had done this it would be very easy for Vodafone to see on the bill that this was happening.  SO .... until someone from Vodafone can explain it I think I need to ask the general public for help!!!

[Dave]

Hi ratmanhk,

I can see that we have been discussing this with you by email since your original post, including a full clarification of the data usage.

We can only discuss account usage away from the eForum, which is why, now that two weeks have passed and your query is being handled by the relevant team directly, the thread is now being removed as part of our eForum "housekeeping". There is certainly nothing more we can add on the boards directly.

Should your issue not be resolved, then please reply back via the same email chain in order to ensure that your query continues to be handled by the same team it has already been escalated to, just in order to avoid having to repeat yourself.

As we cannot go into any details on a public forum, this thread will now be closed.

Dave

eForum Team