Overcharging On Payg Mbb

[Adamant]

Hi All,

I have a number of PAYG dongles with the SIM cards placed into other dongles for in-vehicle data access.

This works brilliantly but we seem to be getting heavily overcharged in one or two localised areas of the country - specifically around the Cupar, Fife area of Scotland.

Our data counters (which are at the point of send / receive any packets to the VF Network) are showing data usage in the region of 6-800KBytes yet this has used an entire £15 topup on one of the devices.

Is there a minimum data charge each time a device makes a connection to the GPRS / 3G network as this is only happening in remote area where, I imagine, large numbers of re-connections will be happening as vehicles go up and down hillsides.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Adam

[Retired-Jon_V]

Hi Adam,

There are two factors which may explain this sudden increase. Firstly, we charge based on all data that traverses across our network - whether it actually reaches your modem or not - which may mean when the modems are dropping coverage, and responses to their requests are still trying to be sent to them, that these are being charged.

We also round up each "data session" to the nearest penny, which seems to have had the side-effect of vastly increasing your usage if only sending/recieving data in short bursts throughout the day. We have another customer chasing a similar issue, and asking for clarification on our definition of a "session" but as of yet, I've not been able to get a response from the relevant people.

I have added this thread to the list of people to update once I hear back, so I will keep you informed when I know more

Jon

eForum Team

[Adamant]

Hi Jon,

Many Thanks for getting back to me.

I'd imagine that these two factors are probably combining together to make issues worse for me!

Our remote server is likely to be sending a couple of extra packets when a device has lost signal to account for loss over the Internet. As you're attempting to deliver these to the devices then it's being charged for and this data is wasted - and needs retransmitting anyway once the device has regained signal. I can take care of this my end which will reduce some of the data usage but this will probably make minimal difference at most.

Also, should the device be in a poor signal area then as soon as it gets a connection it's trying to connect up to our server here and probaly just using a couple of bytes. If the signal is then dropped, a minimum charge of a penny will happen here. Assuming that someone is on the fringe of coverage then there's a chance that this on/off cycling could kill the top-up on the dongle.

If it would help, I can PM you a couple of mobile numbers that this has been happening on so you can look at the charging history for the devices?

Thanks Again,
Adam

[Retired-Jon_V]

Certainly

PM is disabled, so I'll send an email to you requesting a few security details - add in the affected numbers and I can add this in to my investigation.

Jon

eForum Team

[Adamant]

Certainly

PM is disabled, so I'll send an email to you requesting a few security details - add in the affected numbers and I can add this in to my investigation.

Jon

eForum Team

Hi Jon,

How's things going with this - have you been able to find anything out yet?

Many Thanks,
Adam

[Retired-Dave]

Hi Adamant,

No update at this point, however a note has been dropped to Jon to check for an update when he is next in.

We'll get back to you as soon as we have any further information for you.

DaveN

eForum Team

[Retired-Jon_V]

Hi Adamant,

I'm still waiting for a response - I will chase this again today.

Jon

eForum Team

[Adamant]

Hi Adamant,

I'm still waiting for a response - I will chase this again today.

Jon

eForum Team

Hi Jon,

I'm sorry to keep chasing but this is costing us quite a bit in topups at the minute whilst we're waiting for a resolutions from Vodafone.

Would this same issue occur on a Contract SIM?

Adam

[Retired-Jon_V]

Hi Adam,

The engineer testing this for us was off yesterday, so I've had no response yet, but have had more examples of the issue which I've forwarded to him.

We have never had this issue with Contract SIM's, and I believe this is all down to the "round-up" functionality to the nearest penny.

Since your scenario is in effect a "Business Solution", it may be that we can serve you better in both the long and short term if you were to open up a Business Account with ourselves and speak to our Machine-2-Machine Team, who would be able to tailor a more practical solution for you to your exact requirements, with the specialist support to go with it.

At the moment, you're effectively using these devices for something other than their intended purpose, so it's not entirely a surprise that things have gone a bit wrong

Jon

eForum Team

[Adamant]

Hi Adam,

The engineer testing this for us was off yesterday, so I've had no response yet, but have had more examples of the issue which I've forwarded to him.

We have never had this issue with Contract SIM's, and I believe this is all down to the "round-up" functionality to the nearest penny.

Since your scenario is in effect a "Business Solution", it may be that we can serve you better in both the long and short term if you were to open up a Business Account with ourselves and speak to our Machine-2-Machine Team, who would be able to tailor a more practical solution for you to your exact requirements, with the specialist support to go with it.

At the moment, you're effectively using these devices for something other than their intended purpose, so it's not entirely a surprise that things have gone a bit wrong

Jon

eForum Team

Hi Jon,

Our sister company does currently have a business account with Vodafone which are our main supplier. They are running over a hundred devices with contract SIMs which have always been fine at billing so I think you're right.

We're a forked business from the sister company and if you have a specialist Machine-to-Machine team then that would be great - would you be able to get them to give me a call or an email, I trust you have both contact details there?

We're happy to take on a new contract in our name or add to our sister company's contract with yourselves.

I agree that we're using the devices for something a little different than their intended purpose, although this issue will still be affecting those who use them just for web browsing and wonder why they aren't getting their full Gb of data - particuarly in remote areas.

Thanks for all your help here, it's refreshing to be able to actually speak to someone at a network operator who's able to help!

Adam