Comments on: In Australia, a 3G mobile data plan can cost you thousands

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:35:02 +0000

No answer from Kevin JD of Virgin yet – 7 months later and excess charges are still the same.

A shame. Virgin was the frontrunner in my search for a better deal except for this inequitable issue.

Virgin like to be seen as the common sense provider – with realistic contract exit costs and a better handle on tech-savvy low to midrange plan users, but why oh why are mobile (phone) data plans not shaped???

You’d get me as a customer for sure, but by then I’ll probably end up with another carrier.

The risk of a mega-bill is just too great.

Thanks for your common sense and clear presentation of the facts Angus -

By: Dale

Dale — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:25:11 +0000

If you are having trouble and want to activate opera,bolt,ucweb ect via virgin check out my blog on mocospace user xxjagerxx.hope that helps

By: Dale

Dale — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:21:22 +0000

I have been enjoying the ‘free gig’ for 3 months of data on offer recently. . I went over the 1gb of data by a mere 8oooo kb and have been charged $160. No warning txt was sent to notify me i was exceeding the limit and as you posted above the net data graphs are extremely unreliable. . Im just lucky i was using opera mini (as it shrinks data drastically) otherwise i could a been stung thousands.

By: Mobilt Bredbånd

Mobilt Bredbånd — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 16:35:07 +0000

I think the biggest challenge is to get price limits for international use. I used my mobile broadband in another country just for a little while and was charged 1250$…

By: AngryVirginCustomer

AngryVirginCustomer — Wed, 26 May 2010 00:16:35 +0000

I recently received my Virgin phone bill.

I have a 1GB data plan and for the excess 270MB I was charged $573.

After calling the customer service centre to ask for some clarification as to how Virgin can charge more than 8-10 times that of their competitors. The employee said I have signed a contract and Im obliged to pay it. For a company that markets itself as best value, I hardly think this is best value.

I have now been put on payment plan.

Virgin will get a great deal of negative publicity for ripping me off. Hopefully by posting on facebook and forums we can educate other users who may face similar problems and in the long run Virgin can suffer.

By: Mobilt Bredbaand Priser

Mobilt Bredbaand Priser — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 00:06:45 +0000

I just realized that nowadays e-mails can be sent through the phone and all this can be attributed to mobile broadband.

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 02:15:47 +0000

I’ve just been hit by a ~$530 bill for excessive use and the phone was locked this morning; Virgin sent me this message to confirm the situation:

“Hi Brian, you’ve reached your agreed credit limit. Your service will be temporarily restricted. Please immediately make a payment over the web or by phone on 1300 555 100, thank you.”

However, my phone ran out of power last night and was OFF…
I don’t think I’ll be staying with this carrier, and I’ll be sending my beloved N97 back also.
Now I’ve gotta spend several weeks of fighting with them to get this sorted out.

Some ways to improve the service;
Send % emails or sms so we know the data used
Allow the client to set ‘Stop at limit (or shaped would be better), or charged at $5/byte’
Update the usage tool to a better app (or an app for the phones?!)
Include a graph of the days usage – although that then lends to proving the data used isnt true

By: angus

angus — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:50:54 +0000

anon, someone on whirlpool suggested this as well, and I think it’s a good idea. On an iPhone no app can monitor this data, but there is a built-in “Counter” that you can look at to see usage. For Android phones, as you say, there is NetMeter.

However, on-phone counters are never 100% accurate. The reason is that the carrier is counting data as it passes through their network, before it gets to the cell tower. Packets which are lost “in the air” will still be counted by the carrier, even though the phone never sees them. If you are in a marginal signal area, this can add a significant overhead to your usage.

By: anon

anon — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:56:04 +0000

Why not install your own monitoring software to keep track of your usage.
There are free ones out there, eg. Netmeter.

By: angus

angus — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:04:46 +0000

That’s great Karl, however those caps are only available as broadband-only. If you want to use a mobile handset then I don’t think a capped option exists yet, for some reason.