Being charged after £10 freedom freebie expired !

[jimbo1467]

I am a payg customer as you can tell and recently since i havent topped up ( lack of funds ) i have been getting txt`s from you saying i am using data and that you are charging me £2 per day for the privillege. How can you charge me £2 when i am a payg customer and since my freedom freebie has run out ( 24th july 2014 ) you apply a charge that has come off my £10 top-up which incidently i thought i was paying to renew my freedom freebie allowance. I have not said you can charge me outside of my allowance or even signed anything to allow you to do so, I only started getting these txts one week after my freedom freebie ran out, so are you telling me i wasnt using any data in that whole week ? i smell something wrong here, for a start i sense a breach of my data protection, you have no right expecting a casual payg to pay for something he or she was not made aware would happen even though he or she didnt agree to it.
Today 04/08/14 when i topped up straight away it took £2 which meant i couldnt pay for my £10 freedom freebie. So i tried to contact you with chat now but as usual too busy was the reply, so i called 191 ? and spoke to someone called Mpho. He was very rude and didnt understand that since my ff had ran out then how could i be connecting to the web or data transfering, but he kept on insisting i must be, but even though i assured him i had turned off data network. He wouldnt listen so i asked to speak to his supervisor/manager and after some wait he came back and told me his manager would call me back within fifteen to thirty minutes. I`ve now been waiting nearly three hours now for them to call, i suppose they wont call me back. I now still dont have my £10 freedom freebie activated yet but more worringly the thought that you will charge me for using data even though there should be a block on me trying to use it as my ff has run out. It sounds like because your profits are down you will charge anyone on your system to make the shortfall up. This also means anyone with a smart phone and had not topped up in say two months will get this charge even though they thought they didnt have any web access, sounds like fraud and i WILL be taking this further as i and many others thought once your allowance ran out at the end of thirty days that was it, oh no, not to vodafone who secretly keep you online and charge you for it when you eventually to up. 
Is there anyone here that can help as i have become totally dissolutioned with vodafone !

[63johnw]

I am not an expert on payg but will ask one of the community champions who does a lot with the payg side to have a look for you.

[jimbo1467]

Cheers John, have you ever heard anything like this before ?

[63johnw]

I think so, but best wait for Annie_N to advise, I have informed her, so hopefully she can help.

[vicvic81]

The system is crazy at the minute random issues arising hope you get some help and Im sure Annie will point you in the right direction hopefully or you may find yourself in an endless loop like myself. Good luck.

[Annie_N]

Hi jimbo1467

I'm sorry you've been having a worrying time. It's alarming when your money starts disappearing, particularly when the stuff is in short supply. However I'm afraid you have rather misunderstood how PAYG functions, and possibly how your phone functions. So time to take a deep breath, and get it all sorted out so that you don't get into this situation in future.

Firstly, I think that your phone MUST be making a mobile data connection, which is what is landing you with these charges, as Vodafone may be a large and bureaucratic organisation, but it isn't a criminal organisation, so I think we can take it that they're not just making this up. The difficulty lies with the behaviour of smartphones, which is to make a data connection whenever they can, to keep all their exciting apps up to date so that you can get the latest information at a glance. So they make a connection, the network (VF) allows it to happen because you're in credit and it regards you as responsible for the actions of your phone, and it costs you! After all, if you're in credit and make a call, you expect to be connected, not have VF popping up asking what you intended to use the credit for.

Smartphones do this, it's how they're designed. I assume you've not had your phone all that long, so the urgent thing now is to stop it doing this when you don't want it to, or it will cost you a small fortune, and quite destroy the fun of having it. What phone is it? A Samsung, from where you've posted, but each model behaves subtlely differently. I have a Galaxy S3 Mini, and the quick way is to sweep the notification bar down from the top of the screen; as well as any notifications, there's a row of icons across the top, and Mobile Data is a bit off to the right - the icon is two arrows side by side, one pointing up, the other down - make sure it's off, and that you keep it that way while you haven't got an active data allowance.

Another way to switch off the data on the S3 Mini is Settings, Data Usage, then make sure the little box isn't ticked. At least, I'm pretty sure that's it, but I don't have an active data allowance at present, so experimenting would cost me £2!

If you post here the exact model, someone will be able to confirm where to find the data switch. It does take a bit of getting used to, but it's important to make sure that data is off before one Freebee ends, and doesn't go back on until the next one is safely in place. I certainly forgot the first few times, but it cost me each time, and I soon learned to remember!

I'm sure you'll get things under control, and get a lot of fun out of your phone, so don't let the rough start put you off.

Annie

[jimbo1467]

Hi Annie, thank you for your response.

I am using a samsung y ( yeah i know but it suits me lol ) 

Sorry if i didnt make myself clear the first time but i didnt have credit on my phone after my freebie ran out and it was only after a week vodafone sent me a txt saying they were charging me £2 ( even though i had no credit ) for data usage. A bit like having all your electricity off in your home and you use batteries in a torch but the electricity company still charge you because you used some sort of electricity.
I ticked the box on my phone where it said " only wifi " but more to the point being on payg if i have no credit or a freedom freebie in use surely VF dont just charge me without asking me first if i want a £2 charge that i will have to pay the next time i top-up ?
This is all very confusing to me as being a payg customer i am in no contract with VF who then shouldnt be able to impose any levy without my first consent, dont you think.

[jimbo1467]

... and i`ve had the phone for nearly two years now.

[Annie_N]

Hi, and sorry I got the wrong end of the stick - should have noticed that you had first registered with the forum before I did!

I've been trying to figure out the sequence of events. You had no credit, then the announcement that you had incurred the £2 charge for data came before you had topped up? 

I can think of only one way in which the £2 charge could have happened, which is if you had opted in to the IOU facility at some point - details here. That is basically a request to Vodafone to lend you up to £3, repayable out of your next top-up plus a 45p service charge. So it would give you one day of data, but no more. I did have IOU on my account for a while, but then I saw the muddle that it was getting people into in terms of not really knowing where they were, and I decided to opt out. Could you have opted in at some point in the past, and overlooked the need to opt out again? Calling 2345 and then choosing option 4 should give you a recital of exactly what you are currently opted into on your phone.

But even if you are opted in to IOU, what happened out of the blue to trigger a use of data? Are you using some other broadband connection with the phone at the moment, and if so, did you use that to install some new app?

Also I'm a little suspicious of the "wifi only" instruction - where is it? I mean, are you specifying that the whole phone may only use wifi to connect to the outside world, or is it an instruction under "managing apps" as to how updates and the likes are to be handled? The trouble here is that phones move on from one model to the next, and new options come in, so I'm not sure exactly what to expect, but the two phones that I've used mainly, and also 3 others that I've used but I'm less familiar with, all have clearly separate wifi and mobile data switches, although the latter isn't always so easy to find. And it is my understanding that, unless the mobile data switch is actually off, there will be some clever clogs of an app that decides that "wifi only" doesn't apply to it, and if it can't find wifi for any reason, it may decide that it has been out of touch for long enough, and connect by mobile data if it can find a way.

Does any of the above cast any light on things for you? If it doesn't, then I'm out of ideas! But in that case you need the help of the Tech Team, who can have a good look at your account, and try to figure out what has been going on, and why, so that this doesn't happen to you again. It's now getting on for 24 hours since you first raised the issue, so if you flag up here that you are still in need of help, one of the Team will be in touch with you some time tomorrow, via this thread and a PM, to set the ball rolling.

Annie.

[hrym]

This is a really weird one.   I have an expired PAYG SIM, so I stuck it in a device and tried to use data and also make a call.  No dice.   I was offered an IOU, but that's all.  No calls, no data.