Base plan data ran out, and Holiday Giveaway data rewards disappeared too?

[aifilpula]

The problem is in the title - I ran out of my base plan data for the month. I wasn't necessarily worried at first since I had the 1GB Holiday Giveaway data reward from December 2019, and the 2GB Holiday Giveaway data reward from December 2020. I figured once my base plan data ran out, it would just switch to eating through those. But when my base plan data was depleted, both of these rewards disappeared too? I had to purchase a 1GB data add-on. I had barely used any of the holiday reward data, so that's a LOT of data that I'm not thrilled to lose. Anyone else have this problem?

[darlicious]

@Meow 

As long as they are Canadian owned then I dont mind! The one thing that I dont mind paying more for.....a Canadian owned business employeeing Canadians or soon to be Canadians spending their hard earned wages in their communities.

[Meow]

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@softech wrote:

Big 3 are smart enough (or forced to ) keep the brands but at the end of the day, the market is controlled by them.

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Same as grocery store business. All those 'no frills companies' are owned by few big one: Food Basics - Metro; No Frills  - Loblaws, etc. And they own huge number of 'different' names but at the end money ends up in one pocket. Not to mention Crappy Tire which bought whatever they could...

[Bconroy1981]

we all still need to Pay the month fee that we have set up. Just like Hydo. No pay no service

[AE_Collector]

But since when is 4 competitors a lack of competition? US only has three now though we may be back to 3 soon as well. One thing rarely mentioned is what spectrum costs are like in Canada versus other places. The Canadian government uses spectrum sales as a major source of funding for other things. Fair enough, they need money from somewhere and will get it elsewhere if necessary. But if Australia sells spectrum to cell companies dirt cheap and Canada doesn’t, there is a big part of the price of cell service differences. Spectrum costs here are absolutely huge. And Australia would be able to cover a lot more ground per cell site than we can in Canada due to the geography here.

AE_Collector

[softech]

yes, the geographic, low density is part of the cause.. but the lack of competition is the main thing

https://cansumer.ca/canada-phone-plan-pricing/

I always say.. while CRTC has been giving out new licenses to new companies throughout the years (Clearnet, Mobilicity,  Fido, Public Mobile, Freedom etc) , what happened in the end is that they all got sucked back to the Big 3.  Big 3 are smart enough (or forced to ) keep the brands but at the end of the day, the market is controlled by them.

[darlicious]

@Meow 

Well it varies but as an example...

Unlimited calling/texting domestically+28 international countries and 30GB = $30/30 days

Explore more here...

https://www.whistleout.com.au/MobilePhones/Plans-SLP?adi=101&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_ca...

[Meow]

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@darlicious wrote:

@softech 

That's an argument I used to buy into until another member brought up the price of mobile data in Australia and that threw that argument out the window. Canada and Australia compare statistically extremely well but the price of mobile data between the two is vastly different.

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OK... So how much cost mobile services and data in Australia???

[darlicious]

@softech 

That's an argument I used to buy into until another member brought up the price of mobile data in Australia and that threw that argument out the window. Canada and Australia compare statistically extremely well but the price of mobile data between the two is vastly different.

[AE_Collector]

My thoughts exactly. The cost of actual data access to providers is virtually irrelevant. It is the massive cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure. Then they charge what they can in a competitive world to maximize the profit to cover these costs and as well as to make a profit for shareholders and for future investment in the system. It is all marketing as to what they barely break even on versus what services have higher margins.

AE_Collector

[softech]

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@Meow wrote:

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@AE_Collector wrote:

Clearly “included data” amounts are under pressure to rise as evidenced by the continuous 2 GB promo to new customers. So I am wondering if maybe rather than add-on “gifts” this Holiday Season, PM might give us on existing plans without the data promo the opportunity for a permanent data bump. Logically the amount may depend on the plan you are on.

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Question for those 'in the know': how much this data really cost service providers (cell phone companies, ISP)?

Why mobile data is SO expensive vs your home internet?

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The actual wholesale cost is nothing.  BUT.. the setup cost, maintenance cost and the  cost for major network upgrade (5G, etc).  

Worst part for Canada is that we have a big country, carriers are supposed to have the network covering most the country...but unlike US or Europe, we don't have the population.

Add to the situation is the lack of competition...

So, we are stuck..  😞

[Meow]

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@darlicious wrote:

@aifilpula 

Have you ever taken a screenshot of your overview page?

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This is great advise and everybody should follow it: take screenshot of your Overview page on regular basis (even once a week will be good practice and will not take a lot of your time) to track charges, rewards and minute/data usage. That way if there is an issue contacting CSR with a picture will resolve any issue rather quickly.

[Meow]

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@AE_Collector wrote:

Clearly “included data” amounts are under pressure to rise as evidenced by the continuous 2 GB promo to new customers. So I am wondering if maybe rather than add-on “gifts” this Holiday Season, PM might give us on existing plans without the data promo the opportunity for a permanent data bump. Logically the amount may depend on the plan you are on.

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Question for those 'in the know': how much this data really cost service providers (cell phone companies, ISP)?

Why mobile data is SO expensive vs your home internet?

[Yummy]

Unfortunately as long as DATA is on and you Have data allotment to use, OS and apps will use it little by little in the background (even if you tell them not to). I activate data only in emergency when free/public WiFi (stores) do not allow me to see my mail or use TextNow...

[AE_Collector]

@aifilpula 

The good news is that it is now October. Hopefully there will be a Holiday Gift for everyone to log in and accept again this year available before the end of November. Though I am sort of hoping that PM shakes it up a little this year. Clearly “included data” amounts are under pressure to rise as evidenced by the continuous 2 GB promo to new customers. So I am wondering if maybe rather than add-on “gifts” this Holiday Season, PM might give us on existing plans without the data promo the opportunity for a permanent data bump. Logically the amount may depend on the plan you are on.

They like to get as much mileage as possible out of increases to plans that don't generate extra revenue (who can blame them) so it could be some time after that when even more wide spread increases to plans become available to anyone simply by doing a plan change to an improved plan. Just like where we are right now with the $50 8.5 GB versus 10.5 GB plans. There are likely large numbers of people who don’t know that they can do a simple plan change for next renewal to get an extra 2 GB of data on the $50 plan.

Just throwing this idea/thought around, I have no idea really…..

AE_Collector

[softech]

@aifilpula    yes, video and video calls could kill data easily.  I am cheap , I usually make sure i am on Wifi for that   🙂

[aifilpula]

Egg's on my face, I didn't think to check my actual phone data usage to crosscheck it. That solved it right away. Jeez, you make one video call on data.... 😅 Thanks for the help!

[thomask]

Weird, I can still see mine, which lends to the thought that you’ve chipped at it slowly over the last couple years.  I can see how easy it would be to do so.  I myself keep a close eye on my data.  I myself set the limits by the week.

As you can see it’s clearly there.

Can I suggest you do an “audit” on data use?  It’ll be a chart that looks like this.

good luck.

[darlicious · Accepted solution]

@aifilpula 

Have you ever taken a screenshot of your overview page? When was the last time you saw both of the holiday add ons on your account? Did you get any data usage texts from pm (611)?

Did this just happen today or before today so you can view your daily usage pages to see the amount of data used? What usage does your phone show? Apps?

[Anonymous]

 @aifilpula : Whats to say you haven't been chipping away at your gift data over all this time and now you're finally out? Are you looking at your overview page counters?

[computergeek541]

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@aifilpula wrote:

The problem is in the title - I ran out of my base plan data for the month. I wasn't necessarily worried at first since I had the 1GB Holiday Giveaway data reward from December 2019, and the 2GB Holiday Giveaway data reward from December 2020. I figured once my base plan data ran out, it would just switch to eating through those. But when my base plan data was depleted, both of these rewards disappeared too? I had to purchase a 1GB data add-on. I had barely used any of the holiday reward data, so that's a LOT of data that I'm not thrilled to lose. Anyone else have this problem?

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Unofurtunately, this is an indication that you've already used up the giveaway data as well.