Ok,so I’m ‘abroad’ in Canada, and they have different carriers, so I can’t blithely use data like I normally do. Well, I’m told that the conference center has no wifi, and it’s away from the hotel, so I figured I didn’t want to be out of touch, so I’d look into data packages.
Now the story gets interesting: the guy who gave the ‘reduced’ call rate said that the package was 125 MB for $50, but that since I would be only there a few days, that the cost would be prorated but I could use all the data. That’s too much money overall, but prorated… I wanted time to think about it, so I called back to order. This lady said it would be prorated,b it only for my time into the month, so half price for half the data. 65MB, that should be enough.
And, sure enough, I set my device to only use email (I think), and it’s 1.5 MB when I land (hours later) and 2.2 some hours after that. At that rate, I’ll be good. Then after going out to dinner with colleagues, it’s 77 MB used!?! And I have wifi in the hotel, so I was using that on the iPad!
I call AT&T and this time the guy says it’s the full rate for the full data (which I wouldn’t have paid, too high), so I’m OK on the data, except I’m not; at that rate, I’ll go over the limit. He has not the same record of data usage, but says “bookkeeping” could take a while. E.g. he has no reason why my usage suddenly spiked, which means I can’t take the chance.
So here I am, with three different stories about how much I’m paying and getting (two of which got me to buy more than I intended by, effectively, deception), no ability to determine the source of data usage (certainly at least largely due to Apple’s impenetrable data usages, and I’m not too dense), and consequently out of money, data, and contact.
Just to add icing to the cake, despite paying for wifi, I am still getting pop-up ads! Grumble, mumble…
So your mobile must have been talking to my mobile. I had a sudden daily spike of 200MB used by my iPad around that time, when my normal usage is around 2MB per day. Couldn’t track it down to any particular app and I wasn’t even on the road that week, so it was used while I was in the office and (ostensibly) on wi-fi most of the time. Ended up purchasing an app -DataMan- for the pad and phone, though it does not track usage by app – at least it tracks by day and will warn me when I’m over limits that I have set.
The way AT&T works for me is that you buy the plan (125MB let’s say) and put it in place. You can then use the full 125MB all in one day if you wish, but you have to leave the plan in place almost the full month and then cut it off just before it renews. That’s what they mean by pro-rate in their case – if you only have the plan for 15 days then you get a half of the data, and if you have it a full month you get the full ration, but it doesn’t matter which actual days you used their airwaves.