Verizon High Usage Revisited

For those of you who remember, there were several posts a month or two ago by myself and others who had been hit by super-high overuse fees by Verizon internet.

Thought I would update here... I did the thing that was going around and shut off the streaming video option on facebook and it seems to have helped a LOT.

Now, I'm not sure if it actually was the facebook video thing alone or if Verizon got some pressure to quit overcharging, but either way my usage has been cut WAY down.

I have a 10GB per month plan, and before I was supposedly using two or three GB per day, and naturally went way over the 10GB, causing huge overuse fees....

But I shut off the Facebook videos not quite a month ago, and as of right now, my usage shows 6.28GB in the last 28 days.

So, whatever it was, it's fixed now.

About 6 month's ago, I switched from verizon contract to verizon pre-paid, $35/mo saving me $20/mo. I get 500 minutes, free pics and free texts. I'm lucky to use 200 of my 500 minutes. No smart phone. I dropped my land line too. Big savings. I was kicking the idea around of getting verizon prepaid unlimited minutes for 45/mo and some data, but I don't care about data, not smart enough to use smart phone either. I would break smart phone carrying it in my bibs. Verizon prepaid is set up on auto pay from credit card. If you use prepaid, you will never pay an overcharge. It will just shut you off, which that's never happened to me.

Go figure, why is verizon prepaid from Wal-mart cheaper than verizon contract? Prepaid you buy your phone. No contracts. I'm not a facebook person either. Could care less about twitter.

I like verizon, but not verizon contract. Check it out.

I should be so lucky!

I'm on an 8 gig plan, and last month I used some 15 gigs.

Still using about that much. I spoke with a gal at Verizon's Corporate Customer Service without really getting anything resolved. I will say she put a $300 credit on my account to cover overages.

Right now, an IT buddy of our daughter's has a program installed on my computer to monitor usage over a period of time. We'll see if that pinpoints anything. I cancelled my Facebook account a couple of years ago 'cause it was too much of a PITA, so that can't be it.

The fact is, I'm perfectly satisfied with Verizon's service if we can just get my usage back to where it should be. Right now, I'm guessing we should be using around 5-6 gigs per month.

Are you talking about a telephone or Internet access?

I have two devices, a Hotspot and a Jetpack. The Hotspot contract has expired and that's what we're running on right now. The gal at Verizon Customer Service did say the Jetpack was causing problems, so I shut it off and pulled the battery. But the contract on the Jetpack runs till next March.

Guess we'll see if our daughter's buddy comes up with something.

I,too, have Verizon cellular internet access, and I, too, have too much usage on my account. I don't have Facebook. I never download movies. I quit accessing youtube about three months ago, and still, I exceed my 8 gig plan virtually every month.

My theory is that the excessive usage is a result of the "auto-play" advertising that is on so many sites. Weather.com always has little videos running on it. Earthlink and CNSnews do the same thing.

I've been trying to find some way for my Internet Explorer to be configured to stop the auto-play of those ads, but I haven't found any way to do so yet.

Tom in TN

Tom and Goose- I forgot to mention, and maybe this is a factor too, not sure, but at the same time I disabled the facebook video thing, I also started disconnecting my computer from the internet whenever I finished using it.

I don't really think this is it though...last weekend I forgot and left it connected for 3 days straight. Was really scared when I went to check my usage, but it hadn't really gone up much.

I dont use facebook alot either, an hour or maybe two at most on a day when nothing else is going on...but I'm thinking something in their system kept things running even when I was logged off of facebook. I don't know...haven't really changed internet habits much....all I know is usage has gone way down to about what I had figured it should have been in the first place.

I also have Verizon wireless as my internet. We have an old 5 gig plan (but the contract is now over and I don't want another if I can avoid it). We never have exceeded 5 gigs even with the computer on and connected to the internet all day. We watch YouTube sparingly, but most days. My friend just got Verizon wireless and has a terrible time keeping under his 8 gigs. So much he won't even check his email anymore except every few days.

The main thing I have done is install network management software. I have set that software to limit my internet speed to 200 Kbs. This, of course, negates the speed of a 4G signal, but it has dramatically reduced my usage (like half). Most of the time I never notice. When I need speed, I turn off the limiter temporarily. My theory is that when your speed is fast much of what you do online adjusts for speed. Videos are much high in quality, adds become fancier, etc. When you throttle the speed you seem to get a different internet experience. Everything is more tailored to your slow speed and thus is less bandwidth intensive. My theory may be bogus, that's that my theory and I'm sticking to it until someone tells me a better one. In any case I turn my computer on in the morning, do more or less whatever I want all day on the internet, and we have never even come close to our 5 gigs.

I also wonder if operating system matters. Or automatic updates. I have Vista, with auto updates turned off (I do updates manually occasionally).

Interesting.... someone else using right close to double their allowance......

Verizon has a deal this month that allows you to switch your data plan and save you some money, we just switch from 20 GB to 30GB for $20 less each month. They haven't advertised it at all, so if you have a data plan you might want to check to see if you can get a better deal than what you have now. We could have doubled our plan from 20 to 40 GB for the same price.