Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Ripped off on data overage...

A

apple4life

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 18, 2004
43
0
Hi, how many of you or those you know with ATT have experienced unexpected overage on your data plan and been charged???

For me, I've had the iphone5 for 6 months, and today I get a text and email that I have gone over the 300 mb allotted. This is the second time in six months, I am a light 4g user. The first time I just paid. But this time they are showing that I was at 173 mb on the 14th of March. My billing cycle ends on the 16th. And they are saying that I have now magically reached 304 mb as of today.

So I was averaging about 6 mb a day over a near month coming to the 173 mb. Then magically used nearly 130 mb in one day.....

Anyone else...? Please chime in.....

I need help, but what I plan to do is drop ATT, pay whatever fine I need to end the contract and move on to another provider. I will also be calling Apple.

I am frickin pissed and ready to say goodbye to my iphone and look for other solutions for phone services.

Please chime in if you have experienced the same or similar. Thank you.
 
First, 300 mb is nothing.
A backup of my phone yesterday clocked in at 739 mb.
Likely you have an app or setting using data in the background

Try turning off the cellular data for awhile and see what apps are asking for access when you are not on wifi. You may be surprised. Settings>General>Cellular>Cellular Data>On/Off.

I am sorry but ATT and others have their faults but excessive data usage usually occurrs between the seat cushion and the touch screen.

If you can't fx it this way, contact AT&T, or better yet go to store and see if you can figure out a sage increase assuming you have a prior track record of consistently less usage.
 
300MB really is nothing when it comes to LTE. It's way too easy to burn through. I suggest you either get a decent data allotment at 2GB or take your iPhone to one of the MVNO carriers like Straightalk or go to Tmobile who don't charge overages.
 
apple4life said:
will also be calling Apple.

I am frickin pissed and ready to say goodbye to my iphone and look for other solutions for phone services..
Click to expand...

Yeah, good luck with that. Unless you plan on going back to a non-smartphone, thi is going t be something you'll have to contend. Best to just spend the extra $10 a month and get the 3GB plan. Pretty much all smartphones these days are data hogs.

Your other option would be to turn off cellular data on your iPhone, and use wifi exclusively, turning in the cell data only when you specifically want to use it.
 
apple4life said:
I will also be calling Apple.
Click to expand...

And what exactly is Apple supposed to do? The carriers are the ones that set the prices for data usage not Apple.

My suggestion is to turn on wifi and use that. I do this and since I'm almost always on wifi, my average usage is around 300MB/month.
 
Unless you turn off cellular data and go off wifi when available, it's completely unrealistic to make 300mb work for a month. You need to upgrade your plan or switch to an MVNO as previously suggested. Paying the ETF is probably the most expensive option though.

You can call AT&T and Apple, but it will be a waste of time.
 
That's 10mb a day. That is easily 3 emails with any sort of attachment, a facebook profile browse, and a macrumors thread browse. Paying $20 for 300mb is not really saving you money. That plan was designed to discourage people from getting it, and if they did get it att would be making amazing profits.
 
apple4life said:
But this time they are showing that I was at 173 mb on the 14th of March. My billing cycle ends on the 16th. And they are saying that I have now magically reached 304 mb as of today.
Click to expand...
I agree with everyone else, it's easy to use 120MB in a day. I'm at 643MB right now and my month starts on the 6th.

But also, the usage reporting you see on your phone or on your account on the web with the cell company may be inaccurate. You can't rely on it if you are comparing that closely to a 300MB limit.
 
JAT said:
I agree with everyone else, it's easy to use 120MB in a day. I'm at 643MB right now and my month starts on the 6th.

But also, the usage reporting you see on your phone or on your account on the web with the cell company may be inaccurate. You can't rely on it if you are comparing that closely to a 300MB limit.
Click to expand...

True talk. I limit my data usage to 930 mb to leave room for the inaccuracy. With 300 mb where do you put that cushion, without cutting it too close. I'm giving up unlimited minutes and going back to 450 min with 3 gigs of data. I need data more than minutes.
 
Call up AT&T and move up to the next plan - I think it's 3GB? They won't charge you the overages, they'll just switch you over.

And yeah, I tried the 300MB once, and it was horrible. I went over it in one day. We have full blown web browsers on our devices now, unless you were using like a Windows Mobile or Palm Treo still, the 300MB is just a waste of time. If you're really that bothered by getting a 3GB plan, try and find a browser that compresses everything. It won't be as good as Chrome or Safari though.
 
When I went to Italy, I left my iPhone on in my bag. Just Facebook notifications and received iMessages totaled $648. I almost dumped myself in LAX, got on the phone with AT&T, and got it reduced by buying a one-month data plan. I think I ended up paying less than $100. I'm not sure if they'd let you use a retroactive data plan - I've been with AT&T for 10+ years.
 
w00t951 said:
When I went to Italy, I left my iPhone on in my bag. Just Facebook notifications and received iMessages totaled $648. I almost dumped myself in LAX, got on the phone with AT&T, and got it reduced by buying a one-month data plan. I think I ended up paying less than $100. I'm not sure if they'd let you use a retroactive data plan - I've been with AT&T for 10+ years.
Click to expand...

Didn't you know about the cost of data roaming?
 
I have a 200MB plan on my iPhone. For some reason it jumped from 196 MB to 200.68 MB a few hours before my cycle renewed (though it was probably my fault). Anyways I asked AT&T about it, being charged for $15 for 0.68 MB of data and they kindly waived it - seeing that I've never gone over my plan and because he "considered 0.68 MB to be very small".

Can't promise they'll do anything, but they might spare you on 4 MB of data.
 
w00t951 said:
I didn't know my phone was on. Also, if i knew how much data it would use just idle, I would probably have checked again. It was completely my fault, but AT&T did good for me.
Click to expand...

There's a toggle in settings/general/cellular which lets you turn off Data roaming altogether. That way you don't have to even pay attention whether your phone's on or not. You probably knew that already anyway :)
 
Ever since 2007 with the first iPhone, I find it hard to ever go above 500MB in any month. I have refused to give up my unlimited plan although I am thinking of breaking my contract with AT&T because the service it just too slow and always has been. I can rarely get 50Mbps download speeds on my 4S.

I have never had any data overages on AT&T mostly because it's so hard to get one song to download in under ten minutes.
 
Yes, yes , yess

AT&T does have an issue - call them - they'll tell you to load teh Data Manager App - which will show you when you and your apps are actually using data - AT&T gets these charges late at night when you're sleeping etc and not using your phone. They will believe the app over their own system. If you're covered by wifi most of your life, 300 mb should be fine for a normal user.
 
eawmp1 said:
First, 300 mb is nothing.
A backup of my phone yesterday clocked in at 739 mb.
Likely you have an app or setting using data in the background

Try turning off the cellular data for awhile and see what apps are asking for access when you are not on wifi. You may be surprised. Settings>General>Cellular>Cellular Data>On/Off.

I am sorry but ATT and others have their faults but excessive data usage usually occurrs between the seat cushion and the touch screen.

If you can't fx it this way, contact AT&T, or better yet go to store and see if you can figure out a sage increase assuming you have a prior track record of consistently less usage.
Click to expand...

How much are they charging you?
 
I'll never understand people who buy a phone worth $650+ and then get the smallest data package they possibly can. 300MB of data is nothing.

----------
ET iPhone Home said:
How much are they charging you?
Click to expand...

AT&T only charges $10 or $15 per 1 GB of data over plan data amount.
 
We have 4 smartphones, so I switched to the family share data plan. There are 4 of us sharing 6 GB of data. If we ever run into that limit, we can bump it up to 10 GB for only $10 more per month. It's actually $30 more for the data, but the per-phone cost drops by $5/ea.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back