Data add-on just bought, just disappeared?!

[Dis_Gruntled]

I ran out of data today, two days before my plan renews in the 21st.

I topped up my balance by $15 and bought a 1 GB data add-on for $15 (highway robbery).

Data access returned, all works fine, phone works fine as a hotspot again.

On the advice of my friendly neighborhood Public Mobile independent retailer, I upgraded my $50/8GB plan to the new $50/10GB plan, set to change over automatically when my plan renews in the 21st.

In the space of a few minutes, my very expensive additional 1 GB of add-on data has disappeared.

Please reinstate this paid service as soon as possible.

Ideally, please respond by text message, as accessing this community board is paainful and slow.

Many thanks always!

[darlicious]

@Parkbench13 

I don't disagree with your theory as I have seen completely different data usage repoting between a device's data tracker, the overview data counter and totalling the data reported in the daily usage pages. And not off by an amount that can be accounted for time zone differences and the delay in the 12 hour blocks data usage reports we are talking all 3 being way off.

There is also the rare reports of sudden high usage occurring within an hour or two when a user has been on WiFi or not using their phone at all. I have an account that has had some very weird glitches occur on it that has taken a lot of tinkering with by the tech team to get it working correctly. Mind you it did not really affect my data rather a much more widespread issue affected my data usage ( if anyone remembers it occurred on the day the first "more the merrier" campaign launched.)

Have you had a ticket opened for the tech team to examine your account for these sudden high data usage events? Can you identify these times that the pm data usage accounting does not match your usage monitoring? Perhaps this is where you need to start with an eye on escalating the issue to pm management and/or the escalations department if you still cannot get answers or offered data as compensation if your account is not metering your data correctly.

Instead of buying pricey data add ons maybe you should consider activating a new "data" account on the upcoming attractive holiday promotions that when possibly stacked with Canadian Cell Supplies activation bundles can offer you a reasonably discounted data plan that when activated mid cycle to your current plan can supplement two 30 day cycles as a hotspot and if possible can be suspended for 30 days in between cycles. Something to think about anyways.....

[gpixel]

@Parkbench13 

not sure why your account isn't counting data correctly.

maybe try monitoring your data consumption with your device and the self serve website and nothing else.

1.99gb x 1024mb(1gb) = 2037.76

hmmm maybe I'm stealing your data? 😂

honestly this is more or less the results I always achieve. more often than not I am using less data then the recorded amount in my device

my question to you is, are you taking account in your timezone? PM is on ET. im wondering if you may be using your renewal data the day before, assuming that you are still on the previous billing date. when in reality you are on the next bill date.

disable these settings android:
autosync
Google photos backup
Playstore auto updates
backup to Google drive off
disable "automatic system updates" in your "developer options" (to get this option, find your os "build number" located in "about phone" and keep tapping it until "developer options enabled" appears

to save data:
keep your video quality at 480p or lower
turn off autoplay videos on your social networking apps and browser
if you really need to save data. use the "data saver" option if your device has it
use "lite mode" on your browser

Estimated data consumption per hour (YouTube):
360p 315MB
480p 562MB
720p(30fps) 1.27GB+
1080p(30fps) 2.03GB+
4k(30fps) 10.58GB+

[Parkbench13]

@darlicious @Dis_Gruntled 

Just so you don't feel alone @Dis_Gruntled, I too have experienced my stockpile of data being siphoned away at an alarming rate. I am completely and totally in control of all possible channels that could (and would happily do so) consume unnecessary data and I have locked down any and all background/update/refresh/upload/sync/etc possibilities. I also monitor my data consumption through two seperate third party programs and constantly find discrepancies between the actual consumption and the volume PM claims to have been used. It's almost as if PM rounds up the data to the nearest whole MB regardless of the actual usage. I have voiced my concerns before and received nothing but "oh you probably had something turned on and didn't know it" or "you have not adjusted the right settings on your phone"  replies and remarks. Thanks for the advice but in reality, I have done my research, I know what I am doing, I regulate what comes and goes in and out of my phone every second of every day on a well above average phone user level. I begged for a bigger data plan for months and months and every time they have increased the maximum purchasable data plan, I have happily upgraded. I'm now receiving 15 gigs/month and still draining that stockpile by mid to end of the third week into the month long plan. Last month I ended up buying 5  $15 / 1 gig add ons. Now before you all go and say "perhaps you should look into other providers elsewhere for unlimited plans" or some other "tip", I'm well aware of the options you think that are out there thanks, but for reasons unrelated to this conversation and personal ones at that, PM is where I am (stuck). Back to the point of my whole novel reply here ... I feel that PM doesn't fairly and/or properly measure data consumption. There's either a "peak usage time premium" or "2 tier billing" like the electric company charges or maybe they do actually round up to the nearest MB. I would love to see a more precise "data usage" graph or table in the self serve section...it's extremely vague and offers no actual detail in regards to consumption. It would be very easy to falsely report usage. Seems to happen to me quite frequently. Oh and to top it all off, get this...I keep 2 gigs of data add on available in my account while I still have a balance in case I happen to run out of data whilst doing something important and this was the case this evening...My 15 gigs ran out on me  (Sept 1-Oct 1 billing cycle) ad it's Sept 9 today, so my backup 2 gigs add on should have been available but I was completely and still am completely cut off from data and of course, my luck...there's a service upgrade going on right now, early on a Wednesday night, just after all the schools started up again and barely a week since the last service upgrade. No self serve, no *611 nothing. Can't access the data I bought and paid for, can't buy more yet I can still kill time and vent my frustrations out here on the wonderfully helpful community without any sort of data. Like wtf? 

[Dis_Gruntled]

@Anonymous

Not so much. In many fields, not only tech, intermittent problems are a pain to resolve.

Many failures respond well to the scientific method and even leaps of intuition, but when causes are intermittent no solution seems to work, as it’s impossible to duplicate unknown conditions.

Seasoned diagnosticians note the symptoms and gather records of incidence over time, evidence that might at some point make sense. At least when customer service people have the leeway to do so, the customer relations aspect can be solved just as you say.

That is a mark of a client-satisfaction oriented business: that they allow for the human factor, and give their staff their trust and the power of their own discretion.

@Anonymous

 said:

 So your @Dis_Gruntled -ment became the victim of goodwill. No answer to the mystery. Just...here you go...carry on.

How nice of them. See ..it's not so bad here.

Maybe your username could be De_Lighted now.

[Dis_Gruntled]

 So your @Dis_Gruntled -ment became the victim of goodwill. No answer to the mystery. Just...here you go...carry on.

How nice of them. See ..it's not so bad here.

Maybe your username could be De_Lighted now.

[darlicious]

@Dis_Gruntled 

Thanks for the update. It is entirely possible that you suffered from a weird isolated glitch that burned thru your data at an alarming rate. There was a glitch in early December 2019 that customers data was being completely consumed in a few hours even when connected to wifi. No real explanation was given but it was those who carefully tracked their data that noticed the glitch and insisted it was not possible that they had accidently used it that got the moderators to properly investigate the cause and reset the affected accounts data. But there were those a few weeks later who complained about not having any data but because they never monitor their data usage had a much harder time proving when it was used and whether it was on purpose or by accident or via a "glitch".

[Anonymous]

 @AE_Collector : He would need to reproduce his scenario that afterwhich he noticed he had used his data. Hotspot on, connect whatever the other device was that would need to be at a state of readiness to want stuff from the internet, see what happens.

We don't know if maybe that device got connected to wifi somewhere somehow else to then be satisfied with an internet connection.

[AE_Collector]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

 So your @Dis_Gruntled -ment became the victim of goodwill. No answer to the mystery. Just...here you go...carry on.

How nice of them. See ..it's not so bad here. 🙂 Maybe your username could be De_lighted now. 🙂

---

But if that is the case we should hear back any minute that @Dis_Gruntled  has just received the next 75% data usage warning.

AE_Collector

[AE_Collector]

My first thought was that with only 1(?) day remaining until your plan renewal, data depleted and a new improved $50 plan available and your reaction to the $15 cost of 1 GB of data .. this may have been the perfect time to do a plan change with the “Immediate Change” option rather than buying the data add-on. However if something was using your data it was likely better to find out after it used up 1 GB rather than using up your new 10.5 GB allotment of data.

This all reminds me of three or four years ago when I had a Telus Postpaid plan with 1 GB of data to last for a month. During the summer months we live almost full time at our cabin with only this data, no other internet access except for wifi availability at a few other places. This required very diligent management of my data use. I needed to reply to an email from my laptop computer so I used hotspot to connect my laptop. By coincidence it was the morning that my plan had renewed and very soon after I received a text indicating that 75% of my data had been used. It wasn’t even noon and my laptop thought... “hey, finally an internet connection, let’s get all these new pictures uploaded to the cloud”. I was left with about 200 MB of data to last about 30.5 days as my only connection to the WWW. This also left me with a lifetime aversion to “the cloud” which I turn off and fight to get away from consistently. 

AE_Collector

[Anonymous]

 So your @Dis_Gruntled -ment became the victim of goodwill. No answer to the mystery. Just...here you go...carry on.

How nice of them. See ..it's not so bad here. 🙂 Maybe your username could be De_Lighted now. 🙂

[gpixel]

@Dis_Gruntled 

I haven't experienced that scenario yet, but those things do tend to happen here... it's a good thing you monitor your data usage

[Dis_Gruntled]

@darlicious 

In truth, I think that they may have taken me at my word and found it entirely inconsistent that —especially for one who keeps their device as tightly-locked-down as I do— I would buy a 1 GB add-on to make it through a few more days until my renewal, then evaporate it in 30 minutes.

@darlicioussaid:

@Dis_Gruntled 

Please do share the moderators big discovery.....?

[Dis_Gruntled]

@Dis_Gruntled 

Please do share the moderators big discovery.....?

[darlicious]

@Dis_Gruntled 

Please do share the moderators big discovery.....?

[Dis_Gruntled · Accepted solution]

The scientists at @CS_Agent figured it out, so alles gut.

Solvlem probed.

[srlawren]

---

@Dis_Gruntled wrote:

During the 30–40 minutes in question, I only used about 30 MB of data.

---

@Dis_Gruntled fair enough.  It's also possible there was something running on your phone you didn't realize.  While it may not be a typical experience for you to use up a gig in such a short amount of time, it's far from impossible.

[Dis_Gruntled]

hi @srlawren .

Good advice, and good for everyone here to bear in mind.

I use the outbound firewall Little Snitch ( https://obdev.at ) for Mac, which completely blocks all system and app communications with the internet except for those whitelisted.

During the 30–40 minutes in question, I only used about 30 MB of data.

[Dis_Gruntled]

Thanks @srlawren and all for your interest and suggestions.

I have replied to @CS_Agent as follows, which should help everyone understand what happened:

Authenticated just now, thank you.

Further information to the thread I referred you to:

I added $15 to my account and received an SMS confirming payment last night Monday at 17:04 h.

I bought a 1 GB data add-on, and then went online and set my plan to update from my existing $50 8.5 GB plan to the new $50 10 GB (or is that 10.5 GB?) plan, automatically tomorrow as my plan renews.

At 17:35 h I was alarmed to receive an SMS that I had used 95% of the data in my service. That’s a whole gig gone in 30 minutes, while my usage has been about 8.5 GB per 30 days, trending for a year or more.

I had only updated my plan as mentioned, and done some *very* light web browsing consistent with my typical usage noted above.

It makes no sense to me, I need the 1 GB I paid for reinstated.

[srlawren]

@Dis_Gruntled I'm not sure that firewalls are providing you the protection you think they are--they're not really designed to limit data consumption but rather to block certain riskier activities. 

I'd recommend you also mark your phone's hotspot as a metered connection on your laptop.  This will prevent certain things like background downloading of Windows Updates, will cause Outlook (if you use it) to make you confirm before it connects to check for mail, and so on.  It also enables setting data limits on the connection.

[Dis_Gruntled]

Thanks all for your suggestions.

@z10user4 , my hot-spot-using laptop is locked down tight with incoming and outgoing firewalls, and cannot just up and suck down a gig of data of its own accord.

A few hours later, and still no reply to the PM I sent @CS_Agent .

I did try the useless chat bot, which really should be taken out behind the barn and put out of its misery.

For your amusement, here is the feedback that I provided the even-more-incompetent survey that popped up after that time-vampire exercise in futility:

Need to submit urgent request for service ticket, not futz with a useless pop-up that doesn't even scroll, so what I'm typing now is hidden behind the on-screen keyboard of my phone.

[Anonymous]

 @Dis_Gruntled : So you used a different device to change your plan after you bought the data? I know W10 has a wifi setting that limits data usage when you tell it that the wifi connection is mobile. Maybe that device used "mega bandwidth" when it saw it could.

[dabr]

---

@Dis_Gruntled wrote:

Thanks @dabr and @Camera4617 for genuinely useful replies.

The chat bot is useless, so I hope that one of the links you’ve suggested works well.

• For the interest of the readers of this thread: I only confirmed that my (private, undisplayed) hot spot was working. I did not start using mega bandwidth while simply trying to get my plan updated on selfservice.publicmobile.ca

---

@Dis_Gruntled   Yeah, not too many people enjoy trying to use the chatbot.    Personally, I tend to just use the private messaging system and most of the time I'm impressed how quickly (well under an hour) that I've received a response back to verify the account.  Hopefully, they can get to the bottom of what happened for you.  Good luck!

[Dis_Gruntled]

Thanks @dabr and @Camera4617 for genuinely useful replies.

The chat bot is useless, so I hope that one of the links you’ve suggested works well.

• For the interest of the readers of this thread: I only confirmed that my (private, undisplayed) hot spot was working. I did not start using mega bandwidth while simply trying to get my plan updated on selfservice.publicmobile.ca

[Camera4617]

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@Dis_Gruntled wrote:

No, I did not use 8 GB over 4 weeks and then go crazy and manage to use a whole gig in a few minutes.

I need a customer service ticket from a Public Mobile representative.

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You'll need to submit ticket by yourself as previous post described. I would check usage to see if there is a log of your usage for that time frame. Based on that you'll know if you really used data (that is my assumption) or something went wrong with add-on. 

[dabr]

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@Dis_Gruntled wrote:

No, I did not use 8 GB over 4 weeks and then go crazy and manage to use a whole gig in a few minutes.

I need a customer service ticket from a Public Mobile representative.

---

@Dis_Gruntled    You can contact moderators to take a look at your account if you feel that there's an error in how your data got depleted. 

Click this chatbot link and follow prompts to submit a ticket: https://widget.telus.tiia.ai/publicmobile/publicmobile.html

If unable to submit a ticket, you can try private messaging Moderator_Team here:  https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/notes/composepage/note-to-user-id/22437

Edit:  However, if you are hotspotting then I'm inclined to agree that maybe be the reason why extra gig got depleted quickly.    I guess it doesn't hurt to have moderators take a look and confirm what happened.

[Dis_Gruntled]

No, I did not use 8 GB over 4 weeks and then go crazy and manage to use a whole gig in a few minutes.

I need a customer service ticket from a Public Mobile representative.

[Camera4617]

You use your phone as a hotspot?  To a laptop or? 

[gpixel]

@Dis_Gruntled hotspotting 1gb is not a good idea... 

[Anonymous]

 @Dis_Gruntled : I think you need to rein in your phones data usage. It would seem it blew through that gig in a hurry. I don't think this is on Public Mobile.