[redcoldethyl]

I have been a Blackberry owner for just over a month, and with Bell Canada for about 2 years. I got an automated call yesterday telling me my data usage was quite high and I should contact them. My data plan is 500 mb/mth. They're saying records show that over a period of a week, I somehow went through about 5.5 gbs!
My TCARE message shows that my mobile browser is at a nice 18 mb whereas my blackberry usage is 5527 mbs. What the?
I called Bell and they can't explain it, there it is. The only thing they said they can do is "rerate" my plan so I pay for 5 gbs of data @ $60 a month compared to a $300 bill I would get otherwise. I can then call them up at the start of next month and revert it back to 500 mb. month.
I know this seems helpful, but I have to say I kind of feel like there's a gun to my head. I mean I want to know what might have happened.
Each operator I spoke to seemed to take it somewhere different. Do I use youtube a lot? No. Do I stream movies? Game? Open attachments in email? All no.
They say they can't tell me exactly where the charges stem from because of privacy issues but then how can they charge me if they essentially don't know what it's for? I've begun to launch an investigation but it has to wait till next month apparently and I'm pretty sure the final decision rests with a Bell employee and not someone impartial.
I guess what I want is for common sense to prevail. I mean, a gig a day?
I streamed a radio site once for a total of 2 hours, and that wasn't even in this overactive week.
Sorry for the long post. I read on here about another dude who preservered and disputed the 10 gb they say he downloaded. He finally got the charges reversed, which is promising.

[ChallengerDS]

I am on a unlimited plan so I do not pay attention to my usage but what I can say is when o owned my bold 9700 I had Pandora installed on it shortly after owning the phone. I would hit the end key while in Pandora thinking I closed the application but it continued to run. I could never understand why mu battery went from lasting 3 days to 12-16 hours. The problem went away when I pulled my battery a few times I noticed power drain and that seemed to fix the problem. Of course I now know that the problem was I needed to press the blackberry button and close/exit the program. This happens with any streaming video, music, and GPS. I am sure with other applications as well.

So make sure you are closing programs/apps properly. That might help.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[kccman]

Post the apps you have on your phone. That may help find the cause.

[redcoldethyl]

Post the apps you have on your phone. That may help find the cause.

EBay
Yellow Pages
TD (bank)
Scoremobile (sports scores)
WeatherEYE

[acwyau]

No matter what apps the OP has open, 5.5gb of data in a week is almost impossible without doing a lot of streaming. I would definitely get Bell to get to the bottom of this and see if they can trace the origin of the data use. Do you ever tether your phone to your laptop?

[kccman]

No matter what apps the OP has open, 5.5gb of data in a week is almost impossible without doing a lot of streaming. I would definitely get Bell to get to the bottom of this and see if they can trace the origin of the data use. Do you ever tether your phone to your laptop?

Agreed, but its a start! Tethering and Streaming are the main culprits for excessive data counts. Other question is how often did you charge your phone in that time period?

[redcoldethyl]

I've used Desktop Manager, mostly to transfer song on my HD to my Blackberry. But never downloaded/opened/installed a tether app.

I did download the VLCremote app. I rarely used it since it wasn't what I wanted. Don't know if that helps ...

And also, I would say the majority of browsing, streaming was done in my home on my own wireless network.

As for charging, I plugged it into the wall nearly every night

[pbflash]

Scoremobile and Weathereye could use a lot of data depending on if they are constantly running and how often they connect to update the data. I can't see them using 5gbs in a week though.

Do you have any feeds being updated on the phone? Do you have Facebook or Twitter running?

Also, a lot of apps only work through the network connection. Even if you are connected to wifi, the apps will still use your network data. Some apps have options to specify which connection to use.

[redcoldethyl]

I check in on facebook quite a bit, I suppose that could be running.
I Don't use twitter or any of the AOL, Gchat messenger programs.

[Fnord]

I check in on facebook quite a bit, I suppose that could be running.
I Don't use twitter or any of the AOL, Gchat messenger programs.

No chance Facebook would eat up that much data.
I'm constantly browsing and never go higher than 400MB in a month!

Either Bell messed something up or there is another culprit here...
Had you downloaded any apps that week that you have since deleted?

[pmccartney]

...They say they can't tell me exactly where the charges stem from because of privacy issues but then how can they charge me if they essentially don't know what it's for?

That seems to be a load of BS. How can it be considered a privacy issue when it's your phone and bill. They should be able to show you exactly what caused the data use or reverse the bill.

About 4 years ago I was having problems with Bell data too. My monthly statements for data where printed on about 15 pages (double-sided). This was for a BBY that had no 3rd party apps and was never used to browse. the data billing showed row after row of 2kb transfers even at hours in the morning while the phone was off.
I kept getting over billed and they took 4 months to sort it out and never did tell me what they did to solve it.
They always credited my account so I was never out of pocket.

I just wanted to mention this little story to show they can and do make mistakes. Getting them to admit it is a different story.

[anon(49433)]

For what it's worth, if you only charged your battery once per day (at night) there's NO WAY you could have transferred 1 gig/day. I have a 2 gig data plan on AT&T and I've NEVER even come CLOSE to that. If I'm in 3g mode, my battery doesn't last 18 hours for the day. It barely makes it 12. Now that I've forced it to 2g (edge), it'll last two days - but if I were transferring 5 gig, there's no way the battery would last. You should bring that up to Bell and see what they say

[joeskie]

I am with Bell for my home internet. I don't take care of the bills but one day I noticed internet charges through the roof, about 300$ per month for the passed 2 months and the next month after that.

I called them and they couldn't explain, they told me to get an unlimited plan which I did. Next month I get a new bill and again a few hundred dollars in charges. Only then did someone notice that it wasn't a bandwidth problem it was someone using a dial up connection with our account. I don't know how that happened because nobody had the info or needed to do that in our home.

Something screwed up somewhere and it can happen. Took me 6 months to get everything settled.....

Good luck to you my friend

[ShadowFlame]

do you send / receive MMS messages? those are billed at $0.50 per message whether you are on a data plan or not..

[redcoldethyl]

Nope. I never do.
Only BBM, and only text, no file transfer.

[thymaster]

You said you have been using internet radio. That might be your problem there.

[thymaster]

That seems to be a load of BS. How can it be considered a privacy issue when it's your phone and bill. They should be able to show you exactly what caused the data use or reverse the bill.

About 4 years ago I was having problems with Bell data too. My monthly statements for data where printed on about 15 pages (double-sided). This was for a BBY that had no 3rd party apps and was never used to browse. the data billing showed row after row of 2kb transfers even at hours in the morning while the phone was off.
I kept getting over billed and they took 4 months to sort it out and never did tell me what they did to solve it.
They always credited my account so I was never out of pocket.

I just wanted to mention this little story to show they can and do make mistakes. Getting them to admit it is a different story.

For privacy reason, they don't have access to the websites you visited or which IP you connected with. I'm sure it would be embarrassing to discuss which porn website you've been going to. They can only track down the amount of data usage from your phone every time there is an internet connection.

[pmccartney]

For privacy reason, they don't have access to the websites you visited or which IP you connected with. I'm sure it would be embarrassing to discuss which porn website you've been going to. They can only track down the amount of data usage from your phone every time there is an internet connection.

I can appreciate that aspect of privacy but thats not what I was referring to.
The OP wants to know "where the charges stem from". Carriers can differentiate between the type of data used, which he is being charged for wether it be internet browsing, downloading, streaming, mail, sms, tethering. Carriers do not know what sites you visit but they do know what data type(s) has been transfered.

[redcoldethyl]

For privacy reason, they don't have access to the websites you visited or which IP you connected with. I'm sure it would be embarrassing to discuss which porn website you've been going to. They can only track down the amount of data usage from your phone every time there is an internet connection.

I totally see what you're saying but since I know that the usage appears to come from somewhere other than the browser, it stops being about privacy and about getting to the root of the problem.

[Stewartj1]

EBay
Yellow Pages
TD (bank)
Scoremobile (sports scores)
WeatherEYE

Lattitude uses a ton of bamdwidth tjw entire time its on.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[The_Adventist]

Last month I received a text message that said I was over my data limit and that I would incur data charges from here on through the end of the billing term.

I have a 3gig data package and normally run 800m to 1.3g.

I called Rogers and they said that I had used 1.3g on the Sunday afternoon (my phone was off and the phone battery had died and was being charged at the time they say I was using data). They refunded the overage and put me on a 2 month unlimited plan.

When I finally got my bill it read:
Sun Oct 24 OD 2020309.00 $17.55

2.02g in one day! Totally out of character for my usage.

Rogers admitted something happened and apologized for the error.

[MTLcrack_addict]

Yeah, 5.5gb in a WEEK is practically impossible! You'd probably have to stream Youtube 24/7 for a week straight for that to happen.

I've had a BB for the past 2-3 years now (Rogers) and I think my highest ever usage was around 86mb. I mostly use BBM, surf the web a bit, maybe watch 1-2 youtube videos a day...but I'm not careful about my data usage...I just use whatever I want.

I'm on a 500mb plan with Rogers and cant imagine getting even CLOSE to 500mb of data usage, let alone 5.5gb!

[aznlgcy]

I don't whats up with Bell's data network. Last month with my Torch I used about 200MB out of the 500MB I have on the monthly basis. Currently only four days after my billing period I already have 180MB used which is weird as I have not downloaded any apps or been using anything different, have not excessively over used the data network. i'm always connected to wi-fi as well except on the road.

[BB-MAZDASPEED]

EBay
Yellow Pages
TD (bank)Scoremobile (sports scores)
WeatherEYE

hey man, im with bell too, but never got that message at all.... but i was wondering, how do u have the td app for the torch, i keep checking and it doesnt say that the 9800 supports it!

[The Legendary]

I am on a unlimited plan so I do not pay attention to my usage but what I can say is when o owned my bold 9700 I had Pandora installed on it shortly after owning the phone. I would hit the end key while in Pandora thinking I closed the application but it continued to run. I could never understand why mu battery went from lasting 3 days to 12-16 hours. The problem went away when I pulled my battery a few times I noticed power drain and that seemed to fix the problem. Of course I now know that the problem was I needed to press the blackberry button and close/exit the program. This happens with any streaming video, music, and GPS. I am sure with other applications as well.

So make sure you are closing programs/apps properly. That might help.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

I agree. Thats prob what happened to you in some strange way, or they messed up (the latter is more likely). I recommend every so often just hold down the blackberry button (menu button) and you will see all the apps you have running.

5.5GB doesn't seem logical. I have 6GB a month and I don't even come close to it (I think I make it to a Gb most months and only because I tether when I'm in class and internet sucks)