Help With Charges

[will1989]

I pay for a 3GB pay monthly mobile broadband dongle, though the dongle (as it was a present from me) is used by my partner and his housemate. 3GB has always seemed more than enough and never had any problems with going over (or in fact, even near) the allowance.

However, my partner contacted me tonight to say that he logged on and it flashed up a warning that the limit was reached and was worried his housemate had went over and asked me to check the bill. I did, and it has over £12 in charges above the price plan. I looked at the unbilled usage and the only charge (of the over £12) related to the 12th December, and any date it has since then on my account (the 12th-19th) has had zero charges beside it.

As you know, the bill breakdown of mobile broadband is very vague and doesn't tell you much. Plus there is no 'total' counter to say how close to the limit you are during the month (unless you want to scroll through pages of bills and add up bytes), so I have no idea whether they have actually went over the limit or whether the excess charge was maybe something purchased online. Is there any way of confirming this either way?

[daveastra]

hi there, to check the useage, you can use the useage tab in the mobile connect software thats on the pc, this will show your data useage for that period (dates will be shown), as for the billing, basically your charged per 1Gb you go over, so when you step over the mark, you are then charged for 1Gb, then the next entries will be zero until you hit the next Gb of data

also the £12 and a bit is £15 incl vat

[Retired-Martin]

Hi will1989

Some great information from daveastra, thanks again

With all the information that you have given it really does sound that it has gone over by the1GB, but I have sent you an email to your registered address, if you can reply to this with the relevant information and we can check this for you.

If the 3GB offer is no longer suitable you are able to change the package to 5GB, you can see these mobile broadband offers for the price information

Martin
eForum Team

[will1989]

Hi. Thanks for the information. I asked CS as I was on the phone to them about something else anyway and the guy I was talking to said only a third of the allowance had been used and he'd put a note on the account to say the charge shouldn't be there. I'm skeptical though, because why would the counter have warned my partner about reaching the limit if it was no where near it, and why would a charge be on there to begin with?

It makes sense that if you go into the next 1GB you are charged for the whole 1GB. I didn't realise this and assumed it'd be like going over allowances in a mobile phone, where you'd thereafter be charged for whatever you happen to use (i.e. constant charges).

I cannot check the total allowances using the dashboard as the dongle isn't used at my address and I've never used it before. It's used on 2 different PCs (my partner's and his housemate's), would the dashboard on my partner's PC then be inaccurate or does it keep uptodate no matter how many PCs you use it on? Basically, my partner is very good at keeping it in check, but his housemate would just recklessly use it without noticing. Is there any way of putting a bar on it so it stops working when it hits 3GB? I'm guessing probably not but worth asking.

Also my main reason for asking if it had went over the allowance was it's their only source of internet, and if they have went over, it'd mean not being able to use it until January 1st.

[will1989]

Also, I have the dongle at £7.50 a month for 3GB which is an amazing deal and makes the current 5GB offers pretty unappealing in comparison. Otherwise I probably would consider it just to have piece of mind about allowances!

Although 3GB does seem like quite a lot..I don't completely understand how it works but basically normal web browsing I've heard it's difficult to actually go near 3GB, but it's only when you start downloading that you get into bother. Does video streaming (ie youtube) eat up a lot of Bytes?

[daveastra]

hi there, i think you might of found the cause to the data ammounts, as the vodafone software monitors the useage of the pc its installed to, so if its installed on 2 pc`s then effectively you would need to add the 2 ammounts together to see the data useage of that stick

that said, if you collate all the data unbilled through the online my account system, that is for the stick, which would provide that total ammount.

as for how long it would last, the average is roughly 30 hours per Gb, however thats purely browsing, so your 3Gb would give 90 - 100 hours a month, which is alot, say 3 hours a day or so, that said use of sites such as youtube, iplayer and vimeo which are media streaming sites do use up alot more bandwidth, and downloads even more, with say a film being 700Mb as an average size!

your right about the £25 option not sounding so good because you have that deal, however they are currently running a deal of 3Gb for £10 for existing customers, not as good as what you have at the moment, but that would be 6Gb for £17.50, also then each user could keep their own stick giving them a) more freedom and b) a clearer indicator to their useage as sticks wouldnt be getting swapped, as a word of caution though that offer is apparently ending soon, so might be worth making enquirys before it goes!

the other offer, which is very good if you have a business account, is £18+vat a month over 18 months and you get Unlimited* data allowance, so you know you`ll only ever have that one flat fee

* while it truly is unlimited, after you reach 5Gb the speeds are throttled so as to avoid network congestion from abuse.


hope that gives ya some answers and some ideas

[Retired-Katrina]

Hi Will,

There isn't really anything I can add to Daveastra's explanation (Thanks Dave.....again ) I trust the information is of help to you though and if you need assistance with anything in the future please get in touch.

Regards
Kat
eForum team

[will1989]

Everythings been cleared up thanks to MartinB_vodafone and daveastra who were both very helpful.

I'll stick with the £7.50 3GB deal for now as I think this month's spurt of downloading was a one-off for a video project, and is unlikely to hit the allowance again.