Q: Unknown data usage early morning
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Jul 9, 2012 5:26 AMby Lawrence Finch,danwallie wrote:
It bears repeating that among the several issues that folks are encountering, there is one which involves a combination of iOS 5.1+, iPhone 4S, and AT&T inaccurately billing data usage.
You can safely leave out the iPhone 4S and iOS 5.1+ as issues. You will note that the first post in this thread was 2 years ago, on iOS 3.x and the iPhone 3G. And exactly the same issues were reported 2 years ago as they are today.
That date (June 5, 2010) is significant because it is about the time that AT&T dropped the unlimited plan. Up until that time no one bothered to check how much data they were using, because it was unlimited. So there's no way of knowing if the problem goes back before 2 years ago because there's no data available. It likely did, however.
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Jul 9, 2012 5:37 AMby JES42,I've been saying there is a billing problem for well over a year and that is based on a conversation held on the 3rd of March 2011. Here is my entry that was posted on that date.
I put my 2¢ worth in on this thread back on page 77 or 78. In that entry I mentioned that I had a call from Apple (call to my home phone 717-XXX-XXXX) and eventually talked to a second level Customer Service Rep. at Apple (Rasheed) about the problem. He, in turn, called a contact in AT&T's Project Management (or something very similar section) named James. After an hour or so on the phone, James and Rasheed determined that there was a serious error in AT&T's billing software that had not been caught during a recent update, I'm guessing shortly after the 200mb plans came into existence. This error was deducting "AT&T Maintenance Bandwidth" (server updates, etc.) from customers allocations. As I said at the time, these overages had probably been going on since day one but because it was then only an unlimited data plan, no one bothered to check nor cared. Once I and my wife went on to the 200mb plans is when we started paying attention, especially after she got a notice that she was sitting at 180mb of usage and that there were still upwards of two weeks before the end of our billing period.
I again had the problem again a couple months ago (it comes at 6 month intervals, almost to the day) and jumped through the same hoops - it went away again. We shall see come September!!
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Jul 9, 2012 6:20 AMby JES42,About the beginning of March or shortly thereafter. As I said, I am waiting for September to roll around again to see what happens. I downloaded DataMan Pro and then the update in May and it seems to be keeping an eye on things for me. Yes, a battery hog but it is doing the job. I do turn off all Network items at night and clear Apps before putting it on the charger. Currently I am sitting at right about my "good months" total of 12mb usage.
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Jul 9, 2012 7:41 AMby DnceForce77,The last time I looked at plans (after going from 200MB plan to the 300MB one), the 200MB plan no longer exists. I suppose you could request it over the phone, since that's what you had before and they made you go up to a ridiculous plan you shouldn't have to pay for. But 200MB is no longer an option.
So they're aware of this problem, they're just being a greedy business. That's nice. If it weren't so expensive to cut out of a contract early, I would take my business elsewhere.
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Jul 9, 2012 7:49 AMby Lawrence Finch,DnceForce77 wrote:
So they're aware of this problem, they're just being a greedy business. That's nice. If it weren't so expensive to cut out of a contract early, I would take my business elsewhere.
ummm, where would you take your business? The choices are AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. All of them are greedy similarly priced.
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Jul 9, 2012 7:52 AMby DnceForce77,ummm, where would you take your business? The choices are AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. All of them are greedy similarly priced.
Ummm, Sprint at least has an unlimited data plan. And there's another company (though run through Sprint) that has a deal and works on behalf of charity organizations as well.
But thanks for the rudeness at the start of my day.
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Jul 24, 2012 8:08 AMby asfdj,Is the phone really using the data?
1) Write down numbers under Settings - General - Usage - Cellular Data usage (Add them together) and the day/time
2) Use phone for 3-4 days. Subtract new total from above number to get phone reported usage over 4 days
3) Log into AT&T web and look at usage for the same 3-4 day period. Is it within 20% range of the phone?
If yes, phone most likely really is using data.
Remedies: Check for stuck message in Outbox, iMessage etc. Do a "Reset All Settings" (Not an Erase) on the phone. Finally, try restoring phone as NEW and then redownload your apps, set mail back up etc.
If the numbers are very different (200% or more), data may be misreported. Some have reported a SIM swap will solve this - head to your AT&T store and ask them if they can do a SIM swap for you. See if that fixes it.
Still no? Call AT&T repeatedly for months, describing the problem every time you call, and pray you get someone there can help you.
Personally, I had no success. My Microcell was misreporting data on two iPhone 4S units. Tried all of the above, AT&T finally gave up. I unplugged the Microcell, threw it away, and have had no data misreporting issues since.
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Jul 24, 2012 8:13 AMby danwallie,In my case what seemed to fix it was temporarily switching to a 3GB data plan, then back down to 200MB after a couple of days. It was clear in my case that the problem was a bug in AT&T's software that aggregates usage into billing records. Don't switch plans until you have clawed your way up to ICU level support at AT&T. Otherwise they will treat you like a minion and not listen to you.
