Prepay acting like my allowance has run out - but it hasn't (not that I know of)

[Vodacaine]

As of yesterday, I started getting redirects to the topup page whenever I tried to load any web page other than Google, when using Vodafone Mobile Broadband.

This of course is what happens when you have used up your PAYG allowance or it has expired.

However, I topped up with £15 on 10/5 which should be good for 1 month/2gigs and there's no way that I have exceeded 2gig since then (verified by the network traffic monitor in my Kaspersky Internet Security package).

Anyone know what might be going on?

[Ellie2758]

This happened to me a few weeks back. I assumed I was out of credit so topped up only to find, when checking my balance, that i had still been in credit.  No idea why it happened but very annoying.

[HHGTTG]

Despite logging into My Account for seemingly ages, I still cannot see my usage.

The two top left areas of the website just say "Sorry we are not able to show your usage/balance right now, please try again later"

Will this nuisance be rectified in the near future?

[Vodacaine]

Yeah, I get the cannot see the usage message on the web page and when I query via the application I get two messages, the first an error box saying there's a problem and the second a £1 credit ... which is the default response for a few months now. A while back it would give me the amount of data used and when the credit was due to expire but it hasn't done that for ages.

[Retired-James]

Hi Guys,

To be honest with you this is a bit of a strange one as I know that we did see this happen a while back but it seemed to sort itself out.

Can I ask if you have tried to uninstall and reinstall the Vodafone Mobile Broadband (VMB) software?

Also if you place your SIM from the dongle into a phone are you able to connect to the internet ok?

If you can give this a go and let me know how you get on we will be able to look into this for you.

In the meantime if we have any other users who have the same issue, please let us know so we can add you to the investigations.

James

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[Dagwood00]

Hi, My first post as I have only purchased a Dongle in the last 2 weeks and have used it extensively whilst away for the last 6 days. My package was for the dongle plus 2x 250Mb over two months. Like previous posts I have been unable to access any meaningful information via My Account which means that at no time was I aware of any balance remaining nor was I able to see if my second tranche of 250 Mb had been started if indeed the first had been used up.

The same messages mentioned previously were displayed i.e. "We are not able to show your usage/balance etc" which doesn't help at all. The only difference is that as I exited the page each time a small box appeared stating "Your current balance is £5" Nice to know but it still left me uncertain as to whether that was the first or second £5.

How do I get added to the investigations? Is this post enough or do I have to log in elsewhere?

Dagwood00

[HHGTTG]

No way am I going to try and uninstall the software when I would think it obvious that the trouble is at Vodafone's end. I get the same result if I try and login to My Account via my Samsung Galaxy tablet computer!

[Vodacaine]

OK, I have actually now reinstalled the entire mobile broadband suite of software (version is reported as 10.3.102.36259)  but the problem is persisting.

Summary:

I can get on to some websites (eg. Google, Facebook, Startpage.com)  via secure https connection but standard http gets redirected to the 'topup' page.

Some internet based services/applications work (eg. Dropbox, Google Drive, Skype) but others fail (eg. Kaspersky Internet Security update, SkyDrive Explorer).

I'm able to SSH to a proxy server that I own and surf via a SSH tunnel to work around the web surfing problems somewhat but it's slower than a direct connection and eating data allowance on my server.

The Vodafone website account page can't tell me what the status of my account is.

 If I query my account balance via the Vodafone software on my PC I often get the message "Account balance could not be checked.  If this error persists, please contact Support at your mobile network operator.  Support information:  Timeout".  Then when I close that, another dialog box saying "PAYT service is not available".

Sometimes instead of returning the above error messages,  it does report a balance of £1 which is the standard balance returned wheneverI have topped up.

I did file a ticket with Vodafone support but all they can do is suggest that my allowance may have run out.  This is not the case (verified by my measured usage in the Kaspersky Network Traffic Monitor plus I know my own usage patterns) and in fact I am still able to do stuff like use some web services and run over an SSH tunnel so the Vodafone system somehow considers I still have a data allowance.

[Retired-Wayne]

Hi Dagwood00, HHGTTG and Vodacaine.

Thanks for your posts here. I’m sorry to hear about the problems you are still having with this.

I’ll send you all a private message with information on how to contact us directly so that we can look into this for you.

You can find your PM inbox here

Thanks

Wayne

[HHGTTG]

I should have mentioned that I have always had my mobile broadband software loaded onto two laptops but did not check to see whether the MY Account problem was the same if I plugged my dongle into the other laptop. This I did this morning and, guess what? Yes, the same problem.

I have now accessed My Account on two laptops, an HTC smartphone and a Samsung Galaxy tablet and in all cases the information regarding the state of data usage etc. cannot be shown.

So it's up to you Vodafone to sort your website out, as there's nothing wrong with our equipment!!