Any vodafone experts?

[Retired_member41]

My friend received a bill last month for £257, her usual bill is £46 and has been for the last year, she has been with vodafone for 10 years or more.

She has an iphone 5 with 500mb of data

This months bill is £750

She has not done anything different

I'm thinking its using data at night when her phone is off, but why would it have not charged before, very few apps etc?

I do know she never updated to the new ios yet

Any ideas?

She is only young and has a little boy, her wages are less than the bill, any ideas?

Thank you everyone in advance of the fab replies I always get.

 

[AssetDomains]

My friend received a bill last month for £257, her usual bill is £46 and has been for the last year, she has been with vodafone for 10 years or more.

She has an iphone 5 with 500mb of data

This months bill is £750

She has not done anything different

I'm thinking its using data at night when her phone is off, but why would it have not charged before, very few apps etc?

I do know she never updated to the new ios yet

Any ideas?

She is only young and has a little boy, her wages are less than the bill, any ideas?

Thank you everyone in advance of the fab replies I always get.

Horrible thing to happen at Christmas have her phone them up and set a credit limit right away to stop the bill growing.
Do vodafone let you check bills online see needs to log on see what's happening or phone them asap.
If she has wifi at home leave the wifi on the phone on so it uses data from her broadband.
Is it possible she's turned on the hotspot feature and a computers connecting and using loads of data.
Other than that a rouge app but I thought apple were very picky on what they let in there app store.
Probably want to cancel the direct debit at the bank if the bill is due soon till she can agree something with vodafone.
The only other thing that would use lots of data is video streaming

 

[Retired_member41]

Thanks Anthony

Good point about setting a limit, I will get her to do that.

The only things she has open are whats app, facebook and 1 hardly used email account.

Looking online just then, it may be when the iphone is in sleep mode, it uses data rather than wifi

But using under 500mb every month to using 50gb is quite a hike

Thought they would have had some safeguards in place.

And yes awful news before Christmas, good job she had it all done months ago lol, unlike me

 

[AssetDomains]

I'm thought ofcom put something in place were they are meant to contact to warn you that your exceeding limits by significant amounts might be worth looking up.

I know on android there are a ton of apps that monitor data usage install the iOS equivalent should let you know what's using it.

I'd also turn mobile data of completely till she knows what's going on.

 

[Skinner]

iPhone city, my used around 300-500mb on his average bill, got an iphone 5 and now he's using over 4gb.

Vodafone charge around £30 per GB of data, they charge both ways as well, so if she is using cloud services to back up her phone, and installing software updates (which are around 1gb each), I could see te £200 bill being quite easy to rack up to be honest.

I'd query it will voda and see if they they will take pity and drop it, they often do as a good will gesture but she needs to work out the cause.


Edit: has she looked on her online bill to see where the money is being spent ? could be reverse billing or subscribed to a weekly thing, like jamster ringtones etc.

 

[anthony]

For the time being she should consider entering the settings then cellular menus, turning off the 4G for now (500mb & 4G are not a good combination anyway), then if she scrolls down further she can view the cellular usage by 'app'. She may be able to see instantly which app could be the problem (or her misuse of said app).

 

[jasman]

I'm surpised it's taken this long for her to do something about it. Last month's bill should have prompted some decisive action. For starters, I'd switch the bloody phone off until it has been established what is causing the issue. At £25/ day you want the charges stopped TODAY and at least the phone company won't be able to justify charging £25 /day hereafter if it's switched off. I agree about cancelling the DD. Otherwise she might incur a barrage of exceeded overdraft bank charges to boot. And yes, she (or someone who can fight their corner well) should try to get the charges dropped or at least drastically reduced rather than making arrangements to pay over a period of time. If it's technically a fraud - someone hacking the phone and using its bandwidth - then perhaps reporting to the police and getting a crime ref number would suffice to get the phone company to waive the charge. Worth doing anyway, just in case the phone was used to conduct illegal activity so at least she won't be implicated. Ofcom might be another route worth pursuing. Would be an idea to formulate a damage limitation strategy and then exhaust all alternatives to get the charges dropped/ waived.

 

[Admin]

You can turn off the mobile data part and it will still work as a phone and on WIFI only:

Settings/Mobile/Mobile Data (toggle)
set it to off = restricts data to wifi only

Settings/Mobile/Data Roaming
I set this when I am travelling abroad, a guy I Know had a $5,000 bill when he left his on during a trip to the far east!

Settings/iTunes and App Store/use mobile data
set to off (otherwise downloads apps using mobile network)

Settings > General > Background App Refresh
Turn this off, otherwise it downloads App updates in the background

Set to "airplane mode" before you switch it off

Admin