Telstra Mobile Data Usage Accuracy

[peteramjet]

Been a Telstra customer for many years. Had my current plan for near on 2 years, with data usage remaining almost the same over the entire period - essentially web browsing and Internet radio to/from work.

Last month, with the same apparent usage, my data almost doubled. Telstra saw it was out of character and credited me extra data, however provided no explaination.

This month, despite careful monitoring - and essentially the same normal usage - data is again looking to double.

Of note, to monitor usage I normally solely use the Telstra 24x7 app, as this is linked into the Telstra billing system. As of this month, due to the increased usage last month, I'm monitoring with the built in data calculator on the iPhone along with a third party app (My Data Manager). The iPhone and third party app are both similar (within 100MB), where the 24x7 app shows almost double the data of both those apps.

Can anybody provide a plausible explaination as to why my data usage appears to have doubled? I see it most likely as some type of error/issue at Telstra's end - especially with what the data apps are showing, but I'm at a loss how to explain it to Telstra.

[ol' boy]

I think the same thing was happening to my partners phone on Telstra.
She hardly uses it and was going over her 1Gb limit 2 and 3 times in a monthly billing cycle, which NEVER used to happen and her usage hasn't changed.
Only Telstra never treated her so nice, instead they charged her an extra $20 for each additional 1Gb

Hence why she is now an Optus customer on 10Gb a month for $40.

I've often wondered how Data Usage is collected by providers, as before the days of unlimited data, i used to find huge discrepancies.
Of course, you can claim all you like, they are not interested in listening.

[peteramjet]

I was surprised how helpful they were on the first occasion - it may well be a different story if it happens again this month.

I've looked at my unbilled usage online and have found some issues, the biggest being that on some days I have multiple data sessions that add up to well over 24hrs, each with 100's of MB used. Eg, on the 25/07 I apparently used more than 300MB - with the total time on the data sessions for that day apparently adding up to 36 hours. How can there be more than 24 hours of usage? The actual phone usage on that day was no different to the 26/07 and 27/07, yet those days show less than 100MB used.

[gordon_s1942]

Telstra seems to be rather erratic in giving out things as I was never offered anything during the 4 years plus I was on a 'postpaid' (bundled with home phone plan) Mobile Broadband connection except those 2 Sundays when they gave everyone a 'Free Day' because of those 'Outages'.
I did ask about this 'Doubling' I had seen advertised but it appeared only to include certain 'plans' and mine wasnt one of them.
Fortunately mine plan had no excess fees but simply slowed down but to such a slow speed it was not possible to open their Homepage to do a recharge !!!!
If I remember correctly, to 'qualify' for this 'doubling feature', your plan had to be one that allowed excess charges to be applied if you exceeded your Data limit.
As for odd billing, I queried some times quoted (STD or Mobile calls?) which didnt make sense and the operator more or less just wasnt interested and very perfunctory in answering my query.
The attitude was as its on the bill, it must be right and just pay it, thank you and dont waste my time calling again.

[hoe]

do the apps count uploads as well as downloads ?

[Rick]

I have 3 mobiles all on $50 plans each, and have also noticed in the last 2 months we are chewing excessive data, all 3 phones have a combined 7.5 gig, but strangely all 3 phones are on my wireless network when we are home, phones are basically used for browsing gumtree and facebook and the odd game, yet when I had my phone on the $49 plan I never exceeded the allocated 1.5 gig data per month, each time the 3 phones go over it is automatically @ a cost of $10 for a 1 gig data pack, I have rang telstra and asked for an explanation which they cant seem to answer, to me they are ripping people off, all notification etc are turned off on all 3 iphones so its got me puzzled

[Rick]

instead they charged her an extra $20 for each additional 1Gb

They are wrong and have over charged her excessively, all 1gig additional data packs have never been more than $10

[ol' boy]

Yeah, well when she was already still paying $60pm and was out of contract 2 years!!! For a lousy 1Gb a month...
Then like you, she would go over her limit and it Automatically billed her, you can imagine what her Monthly bill was!!!!!

Ok... What i find interesting here, is we are all reporting this in the last 3 months or so.
My Mrs was exactly the same!!! Had been fine until this year really, but mainly the last 3 months.

Have Telstra changed the way they charge for Data or Parts there of?

Anyway, turned out to be the best thing, because it prompted her to leave Telstra!

[Rick]

Have Telstra changed the way they charger fro Data or Parts there of?

Hmmm now that's interesting, I never looked at it that way, If it has changed then we as customers wasn't informed otherwise, I best be looking into that.
And also strangely my home internet gig per month which was increased by telstra a few months ago free of charge so I have 500gig per month now, which was originally 200 gig, I still do exactly the same on the internet now as when I only had the 200gig, but my usage according to telstra is now around 350-400 gig, so I do smell a rat here

[ol' boy]

Thats a massive difference Rick!

Sounds like the old case of Marketing has struck.....
Maybe we should call it the "TimTam Effect"....

[jimbo123]

Their cable usage system is also farked at the moment where they've said unable to provide the data via the usage portal. They're just farked all over.

[admin]

I was surprised how helpful they were on the first occasion - it may well be a different story if it happens again this month.

I've looked at my unbilled usage online and have found some issues, the biggest being that on some days I have multiple data sessions that add up to well over 24hrs, each with 100's of MB used. Eg, on the 25/07 I apparently used more than 300MB - with the total time on the data sessions for that day apparently adding up to 36 hours. How can there be more than 24 hours of usage? The actual phone usage on that day was no different to the 26/07 and 27/07, yet those days show less than 100MB used.

Usually with weird data use, you will find it will be an app thats responsible.

You only have to look at how often they update. Apart from that process using data, some of the upgrades make the apps unstable and do weird things. I have seen many apps comments sections with "your latest upgrade is chewing twice as much data" and similar, which usually results in another upgrade to fix it.

I have seen more similar complaints about iphones than Android. Updated ios recently ?

If you are still stuck, head over to Telstra Crowd Support.


They are pretty helpfull over there and you can also search for similar issues that others have had.

[ol' boy]

It always amuses me with "Live Data Usage", that they are always 2 days behind.
And when you ring ask them a questions, they say "Its not on own system yet, you'll have to wait 2 days" blah blah blah.....

Yet the second you go over your limit, you are cut off instantly or Auto Charged for another Data Block.

Same with Credit Cards, they can never tell you what you bought today, some BS line about its not on their system for a couple of days.
Yet they know the exact minute to charge you a late fee!

[admin]

Thats a massive difference Rick!

Sounds like the old case of Marketing has struck.....
Maybe we should call it the "TimTam Effect"....

Of course Rick could do some homework in to the problem (and probably find he forgot to count the 100 youtube videos he started watching or similar) and see if it is really true.

There is about 20% tech discussion here and 80% "they turk my derta" crap.

[admin]

It always amuses me with "Live Data Usage", that they are always 2 days behind.
And when you ring ask them a questions, they say "Its not on own system yet, you'll have to wait 2 days" blah blah blah.....

Thats an Optus limitation. Telstra updates every 15 minutes, not sure on Vodafone.

[mtv]

...Telstra updates every 15 minutes...

Unfortunately, the info isn't always available.

I've had numerous occasions where I haven't been able to access usage info for several days at a time.

[admin]

I use the Telstra 24/7 widget and generally havent had any problems with it, though I notice a couple of days ago it hadnt autoupdated for some reason, but a manual kick in the pants fixed it.

I am not a big data user these days (only have 1 gig), and regularly burn up whats left if I dont use it on Youtube when I am down the street sitting in the car waiting for my wife. I get notification pretty quick.

[angao]

back to 30 years ago, they can charge whatever they want, and thanks for Paul Keating , deregulated market and we all can stear away from them. It did not surprise me at all, this is a culture built in their blood, do not hold your breath to change it...

[peteramjet]

Ironically, after further investigation, Telstra found the issue was with the way data information was displayed to some uses through the 24x7 iPhone app.

The issue was corrected and pushed out in an app update in August and the data readings have been accurate for me since then.