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Verizon High Usage AGAIN!!!!(Long Post Warning)

R

Ron in Nebr

Member
Hate to keep beating a dead horse here, but was
going back over credit card bills(I know, I
know, should do it every month)...and what I
saw from Verizon just makes me sick...wondering
if there's anything I can do and if so, what?

Here's the scoop. My account for a Verizon
Jetpack wi-fi was activated on 5-14-15. I
signed up for the 10 GB plan for $80/mo, since
it's just two of us in the house, and the gal
in the store said that'd be plenty. There was
an overuse rate of $15/GB.

I signed up for automatic payments, and no
bills in the mail. Just printed off all those
bills to take in to the store tomorrow, and if you read the following, you'll see why...

Anyway, first bill came on 6-13-14. Showed
$240 of overuse, for a total of $320 bucks.

Bill on 7-13, $120 over, $200 total.

8-13, $360.20 over, $440.30. It was after this
bill that I originally posted on here about
that subject.

Ok, so on 8-23 Verizon called me, said they
noticed I'd been over every month, would I like
to increase my plan to avoid overuse fees. Yep,
ok, went with the 30GB at $205 per month.
Figured no way could I be over anymore, so just
let the auto payments take care of things...

Bill on 9-13 shows I'd overpaid by $180 the
month before. But also showed $390 overuse
fee...for a total of $540.

Bill on 10-13 shows...sit down...$2655.00
overuse fees plus the $205 per month, for a
total of $2,860.00 charged to my credit card!

Bill on 11-13 showed $495 over, $700 total...

At that time even though I hadn't looked at
the charges or anything, I switched to a Viareo
plan a buddy got me started on that's $45 bucks
a month for unlimited usage.

Now, I can see the $100-$200 dollar overuse
charge...MAYBE...with my original plan...but
after I "upgraded" to a 30GB plan, to have an
overuse charge of over $2500????

Dont know if the gal at the local store will
be able to do anything or not...and I know it's
not her fault...but someone's gonna get an
earfull....
 
Well Ron you are going to learn a few things about life in this deal.

The biggest one to me is the "automatic payments" charged to a credit card. There is no governor on the billing in your situation. Verzion has a direct line to your credit card. It really has made Verzion's life easy. LOL You have spent THOUSANDS OF dollars without knowing it. That seems to be a lot more difficult than just getting a bill mailed to you that you pay when YOU authorize it not whenever Verzion needs some MONEY!!!

You really need to be watchful about credit cards and retailers. I never give anyone the ability to auto bill me for anything. I have to authorize any and all payments.

Another is that Verzion's local store personal can mess up your service very easily. I have tried to do changes locally but 100% of the time they are not done correctly and cost ME money. I have found that using the national numbers is a pain but things are usually done correctly the first time.
 
Yep, myself and a 20 year old son...he did a lot of video game stuff for a while. I don't think any virus involved, we both have virus protection and run it often, and double-checked when I first noticed the bills were high back in August.

I know how much time he spent in the house though, and I see no way a $700 per month bill with 30GB available would be even possible..not to even mention the one month where it somehow was over $2500???

JD Seller, unfortunatly you are absolutely correct. The few minutes it would have taken to just open the bill and put a check in the mail every month would have at least eliminated the suprise I just got today...

Guess my main question was, has anyone ever had luck calling Verizon's main offices and disputing these kind of charges?

If nothing else, I guess...let this be a warning to anyone who uses Verizon...
 
Ron I agree with IH244 in that I bet that your son is using way more than you think. My youngest got a smart phone last year. He just loves looking up things on his phone. He got his first cell phone bill and it was over $1200 from his looking things up. He came crying to me about the bill I told him it was real simple to prevent. Throw the darn "smart/money pit" phone away.

My stupid phone cost $49.95 each month and I do use it a lot daily as a PHONE!!! NOT a computer.

The cell phone companies LOVE you to use their smart phones as a high percentage of them generate overages charges.
 
(quoted from post at 20:53:30 01/21/15) Ron I agree with IH244 in that I bet that your son is using way more than you think. My youngest got a smart phone last year. He just loves looking up things on his phone. He got his first cell phone bill and it was over $1200 from his looking things up. He came crying to me about the bill I told him it was real simple to prevent. Throw the darn "smart/money pit" phone away.

My stupid phone cost $49.95 each month and I do use it a lot daily as a PHONE!!! NOT a computer.

The cell phone companies LOVE you to use their smart phones as a high percentage of them generate overages charges.
Click to expand...

Wow. I look things up all the time, never got a overage on my AT&T IPhone. In fact, I show that I use very little bandwidth. I've never thought to watch a movie on one.
 
One of you neighbors got access to your wi fi.
or you were hacked. Don't let anyone have the password next time. (talk to son!)
 
(quoted from post at 06:29:20 01/22/15) One of you neighbors got access to your wi fi.
or you were hacked. Don't let anyone have the password next time. (talk to son!)
Click to expand...

Have to agree , Some years ago a useless tech left our wifi unguarded , the word got around the neighbourhood from the less than Christian people next door who used it to download films . Fairly soon cars were parking outside and the glow of computer screens became a nuisance . I walked the dog one evening and nonchalantly asked one young man what was happening , he very kindly told me that '' the dude in this house has heaps of download time and no password '' ! I thanked the young man then promptly turned the router off . The cars stopped coming but with the most brazen of cheek the daughter from next door had the hide to ask me if we were having internet problems !
Change your provider and your password .

Found this , food for thought !

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2919762/Hacking-Wi-Fi-s-child-s-play-Seven-year-old-shows-easy-break-public-network-11-minutes.html
 
Verizon can't even build a cell phone that works, what makes you think they know anything about providing internet service? Do like I did years ago and tell them where they can put it.
 
Do you or your son use Skype or FaceTime to video call people for 'free'?

Facetime will use close to a gig an hour, and I see on the net folks are complaining Skype, after an upgrade, is using near 2gig per hour.

That can eat up a data plan pretty quick if you video call someone an hour or two a day, and some do a lot more than that....

Any sort of video is going to eat up data pretty fast, video phone, movies, YouTube....

Are you in a fringe area, my understanding is if you can't get a good connection to a cell tower everything panics and tries over and over to transmit data packs over and over, using up data but accomplishing nothing.

There are several parasitic programs and apps that will go out every minute or two and look for new updates - Facebook upgraded a time ago and suddenly everyone was chewing up data bandwidth, as there was some automating updating going on very frequently, even with the tablet or computer in sleep mode. I forget the details.

Some random thoughts.

Paul
 
Yup, I got a 1 gig plan and was wondering if it would be enough for one smart phone and one dumb phone. Turns out I never use even half that much, and last month I was somewhere around 50 meg, 1/20th of my plan limit. Mentioned it to a friend, he said "Well, you're not 15 years old".
 
I'm thinking of dropping my Verizon internet. Just connecting to the net seems to burn up a 1/4 gig.
My prepaid smart phone is 45 for unlimited use. Won't be do going back to a contract phone.
 
I have no experience with Verizon's internet service but they're cell phone service has been problem free.
 
We were on the Verizon 10 GB per month plan. Not enough. The Jetpack lets you look at it anytime you want and see how much you've used. So how the heck could you go over without knowing it? We watched our's everyday and when it got to 9 GB and we had 5 days yet to go - we called and upped it to 15 GB. The MiFi Jetpack 6620L monitors your usage and you can look at any time to see where you are at. As far as why you are using so much? Listening to Internet radio? Any videos? Are your computers left on all day and set to automatically update?
 
(quoted from post at 02:24:26 01/22/15) Verizon can't even build a cell phone that works, what makes you think they know anything about providing internet service? Do like I did years ago and tell them where they can put it.
Click to expand...
Verizon does not build the cell phones you use on their service.
 
That Jetpack shows you where your usage is at, at any time. Verizon also sends out warning emails when you start getting near your monthly limit. How come you didn't notice?
 
You need to ask whoever is using this Wi-Fi what they are doing and/or install blocking software on all computers linked to your hotspot. There are, ahem, things on the internet that use large amounts of data to watch because they are also pushing ads, viruses, and malware. Something to look at.

Word of warning on cellular stores that I found out too late. Every time you walk into a branded cell store, ask if it is a company store or a franchise store. If it is franchised, ask where the closest company owned store is and politely walk out. Franchised stores can look just like a company store but they do not have your best interest in mind. They also will not have the best plans available because they don't get as good a kickback on selling the low end plans. They also do not tend to have employees that are well versed in the ins and outs of specific plans and can't help that much with billing. I found this bit of info out over a problem I had with AT&T.

As a reference, I use an AT&T hotspot for my business due to the expense of business class cable internet at my address. I have a 10GB shared plan with my wife's smartphone, and the most I have ever used is 7GB when we used it on a vacation as our internet. I will not allow Netflix to be used on it, though. I usually average about 3GB a month when it never leaves my shop.
 
My wife's cousin got a $1500 bill from Verizon that was supposed to be $25. He called Verizon and got an agent that said he had used his Hotspot in Canada. He told the agent that he was retired and could not pay the bill. The agent forgave him and only charged him $25. He did not even have to get a supervisor. I would try calling Verizon first.
 
Don't you have this screen to look at whenever you want?
a180065.jpg
 
I see two BIG mistakes here.....
First one is having an unsecured WiFi hotspot. I personally do not like wireless networks. The performance is poor, and the network is open to unwanted parasites. Your neighbors could easily be siphoning off the gigabytes that you are paying for. Depending on your signal strength, that could add up to a LOT of data usage going to non-paying users.
Second, I >>>NEVER<<< allow ANY bill collector access to a credit card or bank account. PERIOD!
This can potentially allow a creditor to overdraw an account, go over the credit limit on a credit card, and then the fees start rolling in.

Here is a story that shows every reason against automatic billing/payment.....
An elderly widow I knew had all of her bills set up for automatic billing and payment. Her only source of income was Social Security. Normally, this system seemed to work well for her. BUT.....one fine day, when our government was "shut down" while the politicians in Washington were having one of their hissy fits, the SS payments were delayed. Payments and bills began being charged to a nearly empty account. The overdraft fees, insufficient funds fees, and extra fees from the bill collectors began rolling in. It took her almost THREE YEARS to dig out of that financial hole.

Just my humble opinion.....automatic payments should be OUTLAWED along with 30-year mortgages.
 
How is the Verizon MiFi "unsecured?" Needs a password to access and a 75 foot distance is about as far as it can transmit.
 
A couple I know had 'smart' phones, husband is a tree trimmer and needs the mobile apps for some things. Wife like to watch the movies and videos since current house is in sort of deadzone for TV unless 60 foot tower used. 10 gig for couple hundred a month for 2 phones or something like that with a $20.00/gig charge after wards. 4 month back the bill had the movie watching at extra $700.00, then another $500.00 extra following month. Cable internet/phone service beginning of month and no more 'smart' phone since bill couldn't be paid by 'dumb' human. I have a Tracphone for emergency use- $21.35 every 3 month gets me enough minutes for my needs as a phone, some people complain I don't have it on for my emergency use-- but what they mean is their lack of foresight in needing a ride or money for something like a good dope deal results in lack of food money and their other 'connected' friends with their phones are also broke. Lack of foresight on their part does NOT mean a emergency on my part. Verizon doesn't like me anyway- a complaint with State of Wisconsin stays on record 3 years against them for billing scam attempt. RN
 
You could have got a virus or malware that slipped in un-noticed on a wireless mobile hotspot connection. Virus protection has to be kept updated. A malware called "roaming application" or roaming apps can attached itself to your smartphone software or computer software. Then other unknown folks are causing data use on your phone in addition to your own family. (Whenever some family member opens a browser)Check that you have updates on IE browser automatic if you are using IE and also have 2015 anti-virus installed and running updates regularly. Once you get a "roaming app" is very hard to get rid of. New 2015 anti-virus software load usually will quarantine, de-activate it. This virus will run your monthly bill up 5 - 10 times normal rate. Has nothing to do with phone company.
 
You must be living on a different planet than I am then. Had Verizon for fifteen years here in Colorado and it has been nothing but nonstop problems. Every call is generally dropped at least once while talking or else the phone hangs up or goes dead. Last phone the screen died about the same time as the battery died. Got a new phone. Only good thing is the battery stays charged for four days before it needs charging. Same problems with the rest of it tho. Drops calls or hangs up or the screen goes black and then hangs up or it won't ring thru to the number you are calling. Verizon is a crappy phone company.
 
OK, here's the deal: Verizon 4G LTE is VERY fast compared its data cap. It's easy to blow through the limit on your plan. Lots of sites push lots of garbage to your browser; if you have a fast connection that junk gets pushed to your PC that much faster. You can click on a five minute video, and have it downloaded while you're only a minute into it; if you change your mind and decide you don't want to watch it it's too late. Repeat that cycle a few times and you can download a hour's worth of video in fifteen minutes, not realizing you've just burned through half a GB of usage.

You're chances of getting any slack from Verizon after you've already left them are remote. Lesson to be learned: MONITOR YOUR USAGE! Verizon has a fairly good web site where you can see how much usage you had each day. From that, you can spot days with high usage and try to figure out what happened that day. Maybe a relative used your WiFi to watch a few vids?

Another thing you can do is change your browsing habits: Close your browser when your not using it. Log off your PC or shut it down when you're not using it. Shut off the WiFi when visitors come. Don't leave multiple tabs or windows open when you're not using them; many sites like Yahoo will pump a lot of data to browser even though you're not actually viewing their window.

Even though your Viaero may have "unlimited" usage, I'll bet they throttle your connection once you go over a certain usage.
 
I never looked at the jetpack, and I rarely check email since 99.9 percent of it is junk anymore, even with a spam filter.
 
The "salesgirl" at the verizon store said 10GB would be plenty unless we watched movies etc., so I never checked usage...then, after the call from Verizon where I upped it to 30GB, I figured that was plenty, since even prior to upgrading I'd never used over 30 in a month, so, again, I never checked.
 
No skype or facetime. But my son does play some video game where he "competes" against others...I'm sure that probably sucked up a lot of minutes or gigabytes or whatever it's called.

Another thing I thought of today...I have DirectTV, and something in the main control box of it hooks up to the internet through a wifi signal. I never used it since when first I tried it'd only last a few minutes before losing signal. Then a few times a week a notice would pop up on the screen saying "internet connection lost" or something like that....I wonder if it was constantly connecting and disconnecting and using up minutes?
 
As mentioned above, closest neighbors are my
parents 3 miles away. For someone in a car to
"steal" it, they'd have to be able to get a signal
while stopped on a major highway a half mile from
my house, where I'd notice a vehicle stopped, or
else drive the half mile down our private lane, 30
miles from the closest town. No, don't think it
was stolen unless there's big signal boosters out
there that can steal a signal from 10 miles
away...
 
No, I never saw that screen when I was still using the jetpack. It was all black and white, no color....of course I never really looked through it since the girl who sold me the thing said 10GB would be more than enough.
 
Quick update- as I expected, when I stopped at our local store today, the girl working couldn't do anything but give me an 800 number to call. Will see how that goes.

I'm thinking this will probably wind up as being just a lesson learned.

The girl at the store said she thought some mistake had to have been made too, but couldn't do more than just say that.

At $15 bucks per GB over the limit charge, a $2500 overuse fee according to my math comes out at over 166GB OVER the 30GB limit. So, darn close to 200GB used in one month...Are there really websites or things out there that could cause that much usage???
 
Our Verizon usage almost always goes over our 8 GB plan. We have a hotspot for our office computers and I have a Jetpack that I carried with me on the road when I was doing insurance inspections so I could log onto my laptop if I needed to.

When I quit the inspections, I was using the Jetpack to run our desktops and the usage went berserk. I talked to a gal at Verizon Customer Service and she ran an analysis on our usage. She told me the Jetpack was the culprit and credited our account $300.

Went back to the hotspot and our usage dropped. Still more than I think it should be, usually from 9 to 11 GB per month, but I can live with it.

The Jetpack is now on the shelf with the battery pulled. It had a one year warranty, and I got it on a two year contract. The contract runs expires in March. I can't get it replaced under warranty, and I can't cancel the account 'cause the contract hasn't expired. The contract on the hotspot expired last spring.

So--in March I can cancel the Jetpack 'cause I don't need it anymore. Then rethink the entire 'Net service bit.

I like Verizon's service but I still don't understand how our usage crept up like it did.
 
Your first question, if you're going to make a case to Verizon, should be "is this even possible?"

196 GB x 1024 MB/GB = 200704 MB
200704 MB x 8 bits/byte = 1,605,632 Mb
1,605,632 Mb / (30 days/month) = 53,521 Mb/day
(53,521 Mb/day) / (24 hours/day) = 2230 Mb/hr
(2230 Mb/hr) / (3600 sec/hr) = 0.619 Mb/sec

I just ran a speed test on my Verizon 4G LTE service. It was just shy of 15 Mbps. So it is entirely possible to use up 196 GB in one month. It is a bit surprising you didn't notice it, though. If it was your PC using up bandwidth, I would expect it to slow to a crawl from time to time.

What can use up this kind of bandwidth?

Videos, particularly full length movies. We have a TV that can download movies from Netflix. My son thoughtfully entered his Netflix account info into the TV without telling me. My wife really doesn't understand the concept of bandwidth caps; she and the grandkids had watched several movies before I found out what was going on.

Offsite backup services like Carbonite; they need to take a full snapshot of your disk for the initial backup.

Lastly, malware. If you are running MS Windows, there's a good chance your PC is a 'bot', which criminals use to spam or attack other computers.

All I can suggest for when you talk to Verizon is to ask them to supply the detailed usage logs for those months. I don't know how far back they keep them; I can only view the current month and previous three months.
 
(quoted from post at 22:19:21 01/22/15) Quick update- as I expected, when I stopped at our local store today, the girl working couldn't do anything but give me an 800 number to call. Will see how that goes.

I'm thinking this will probably wind up as being just a lesson learned.

The girl at the store said she thought some mistake had to have been made too, but couldn't do more than just say that.

At $15 bucks per GB over the limit charge, a $2500 overuse fee according to my math comes out at over 166GB OVER the 30GB limit. So, darn close to 200GB used in one month...Are there really websites or things out there that could cause that much usage???
Click to expand...

Ron, I'msorry for your troubles guy. Really. But as the father of 2 kids who just had to have "smart phones", I can say with some certainty that your kid is using all that bandwidth. Both my kids had Verison, ATT and a couple others. Both had overages in the hundreds of dollars. It's not hard at all. Both now own Straight Talk pay as you go type phones. I'd yak Jr's phone ASAP. Nothing against your kid, but they just don't realize how much their games and whatnot use.
 
By default, when Verizon installs a new router, it is WiFi enabled and not password protected until the subscriber configures it. For the most part, Verizon personnel are not allowed to configure for you for security reasons. They will assist you and advise you, but passwords and logins are your private information. Wireless systems CAN be hacked, and the range can also be dependent on the location of the router. The higher off the ground, the longer the range. Signal does degrade over distance, but can still be usable at longer distances - only slower.
 
He's using a Verizon 4G LTE "Jetpack", which is a wireless hotspot you pick up at the Verizon store. There's no installation because the whole point is that it's a mobile device. They are password-protected out of the box.
 
(quoted from post at 07:24:26 01/22/15) Verizon can't even build a cell phone that works, what makes you think they know anything about providing internet service? Do like I did years ago and tell them where they can put it.
Click to expand...

Verizon doesn't build cell phones.
 
(quoted from post at 21:19:21 01/22/15) Quick update- as I expected, when I stopped at our local store today, the girl working couldn't do anything but give me an 800 number to call. Will see how that goes.

I'm thinking this will probably wind up as being just a lesson learned.

The girl at the store said she thought some mistake had to have been made too, but couldn't do more than just say that.

At $15 bucks per GB over the limit charge, a $2500 overuse fee according to my math comes out at over 166GB OVER the 30GB limit. So, darn close to 200GB used in one month...Are there really websites or things out there that could cause that much usage???
Click to expand...

I downloaded one movie last nite was 2.4 GB.
 
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