Mobile Phone company overcharging

[Kenshin X]

Need to vent and need some advice guys...

My mobile phone company (lets call it "X") charged me for excess data usage i did not use. I have a samsung galaxy S phone. apparently its 500 meg of excess usage! :o

I for one, am very careful about what i use my phone for download and if its over 5 megs i'd use my wifi at home. i wouldn't be stupid to use my 3G for download unless its really urgent because:

1) its slow

2) its expensive

I have a limit of 300 meg to use for download and i cannot see how i can use over this (+ almost 200 meg) over the limit. just too ridiculous.

So I called them up and asked them to investigate and tomorrow will be the 2 weeks they took to investigate. They rang me yesterday saying that the bill is correct and there is no need for corrections. To my anger and frustration i rang them up today again (because i was busy yesterday) and told them that i wasn't going to pay something that i KNOW i didn't use. I also make sure that every single program that's running in the background is shut down before i went to sleep and i also downloaded a program called "apndriod" to disable the apns on the phone just in case it does download in the background.

this is the phone bill at the beginning of the contract

as u can see the usage is acceptable... (except on one day that it showed 7 meg...

then the second bill comes...

as u can see on some days there is 3x meg usage. the usage is also every single day which is unbelievable. There was also a day were my wife and i were at home and we didn't touch the phone at all we got 2x meg download via 3G when it was connected to the wifi.

company X said that there is a technical issue with the phone that shuts off wifi when its on standby and uses the 3G network to download. but the precaution i took when i downloaded "apndriod" which prevents it from using 3G and also i shut down all the programs before i put the phone on standby. so how the hell is it downloading stuff when all the programs are shut off???

phew, so after all that i told them this:

"if you keep charging me like this. i'm going to cancel the contract because i rather cancel and pay all the monthy fees and charges + the additional cancellation fee rather than paying your company 400 dollars each month for data usage i did not use.

next you're going to loose a costumer who had high expectations joining your company

then your company will have a bad name

THEN i'm going to contact the telecommunications ombudsman and take it from there.

So unless you prove to me that I used these data (give me a history of the urls and websites i been to), i'm NOT going to pay your company a cent until this has been rectified."

"oh i'm sorry for the inconvenience, i'll forward this to the relevant department and they will get back to you later on today."

Any advice guys? cheers for reading.

[SecaBoy]

good luck with it mate...

a friend had a similar problem... optus basically told her "we dont have to prove what sites you visited, this is the data usage on your phone and therefore you're liable for it"...

after about 1 month of constant phone calls and face to face meetings, optus finally decided that "in good faith" they would half the bill... so my friend just accepted that and paid like $200 for nothing...

its going to be a sh!t fight, but try to talk to the most senior person they will pass you on to... :)

[Kenshin X]

good luck with it mate...

a friend had a similar problem... optus basically told her "we dont have to prove what sites you visited, this is the data usage on your phone and therefore you're liable for it"...

after about 1 month of constant phone calls and face to face meetings, optus finally decided that "in good faith" they would half the bill... so my friend just accepted that and paid like $200 for nothing...

its going to be a sh!t fight, but try to talk to the most senior person they will pass you on to... :)

pfft "in good faith"

but for some reason, i've never had a problem with optus... their costumer service is always good and fix problems with no hassles...

i always hear good stuff about this company so i decided to try it, such a bad mistake. i bet they promote the 3 months for free and then stuff everyone over by charging them 5 times the amount.

all a bunch of lairs and criminals

[SecaBoy]

they're all the same man... none of the companies are good with their customer service... they all try to rape you...

the only time you have a good experience with a telco is when you dont need to talk to them... if you have to talk to them, then you're guaranteed to be ripped off and abused like a $2 whore...

[Kenshin X]

far out, still waiting for their damn call. i'm trying very hard not to abuse them and raise my voice. then they will have a reason to not fix the "problem".

the last time this happened was with another company who gone bankrupt. one email i fully abused them and they refused to help me due to the "vulgar" language i was giving them they did pay me back however but not the full amount... <_<

this was when i was "young and stupid" :D

[Foss]

they're all the same man... none of the companies are good with their customer service... they all try to rape you...

the only time you have a good experience with a telco is when you dont need to talk to them... if you have to talk to them, then you're guaranteed to be ripped off and abused like a $2 whore...

I'd almost go further and say the only time you won't get done over by a telco is when you don't have a phone.

@KENSHIN, Just keep pushing them, dude. If they aren't trying to rip you off, then they have no reason to hide anything, and therefore no good reason not to give you a detailed usage list. If you can't budge them, sic the ombudsman a local MP onto them.

[Morequick]

holy sh!t $380 for excess usage, that's insane, half the cost of my phone right there lol.

I guess one way to check if there was anything substantial downloaded would be to check your phones hard drive and how much is used as 500mgb is substantial.

I check my usage as often as I can so I don't have any surprises when the next bill comes, but this is pretty dodgy of Virgin to do this. I wouldn't pay it imo

[Kenshin X]

thanks for the advice guys.

i've called them again and in the end they offered me to pay halfway which is 136.80 extra.

i've got two options:

1) pay the bill as a one off.

2) go further to the ombudsman.

I'm leaning towards option 1. I already enabled back 3G on the 30th of october and will be closely monitoring the data usage on the phone. if something like this happens again, i'm going to turn off the 3G forever until the contract is finished.

i also feel that after all this, its not worth having to stress more to go to the ombudsman and wait many months to get a couple of hundred dollars back from the company.

hard part is convincing my other half

fuken scam i tell u...

[Kenshin X]

ok folks... ninja update,

after paying my bill, i found out that they over charged me 30 bucks while calculating the rectified amount!

fuk this company i'm not going with them again...

happens once, then twice, never a third time

[Morequick]

Terrible service.

Such a blatant money grab. I remember when I was signing up with Virgin too, they offered a $50 discount from my bills if I signed up over the phone, so I did. Then there was no $50 discounted from my bills and I had to chase it up over a week before they "checked their servers" and there was a bookmark saying that my contract did specify a $50 deduction and they "didn't know why" it wasn't put in place.

These methods of doing business is just atrocious, preying on those who have a busy schedule and don't browse every tiny detail of their bills under a microscope just so they can get away with extra charges and not fulfilling their obligations.

I agree with you Kenshin that the time spent just isn't worth it for $100 or so, but there must be a line that is drawn.

I'm definitely looking elsewhere once my Virgin contract is finished.

[matt-starlet]

go after the ombudsman for sure. They got me out of my 3 contract months in and I didn't have to pay a thing

200MB though is not to hard to go over with the current range of smart phones I personally don't use the net to much on my phone as I am usually around a computer but I regularly go over that amount. This is why having smart phones on low end plans is such a bad idea. Wonder why Optus don't have the Galaxy on the $29 cap.... becuase on a $49 or $59 you get 1-2GB respectively. Try downloading data tracker there are heaps on the marketplace.