Virgin blackberry please help!

cazzy123

I have had my phone for several months with Virgin Mobile and managed to run up a bill of almost £250 this month. Apparently there is a 25mb daily allowance for blackberry usage and a 1Gb monthly allowance for internet usage. I cannot understand what the difference is. When I contacted Virgin to check the balance of my usage no problems cos Blackberry only shows up on the account balance. Unbeknown to me I was using blackberry usage which I could not check with my provider. Have contacted Virgin who say they owe Blackberry so I have to pay them, they cannot tell me what times or what I was doing to run up such a bill saying to contact Blackberry which I cannot do via the phone . I am so upset my internet usage for the month is only 7.46 MB whilst my Blackberry usage was 773.47 MB = £218.43. Usually my bill is about £26.00 I cannot afford to pay and just dont know what to do the only thing I am guilty of is stupidity. Would I have a case if I went to OFCOM? as I really feel conned. Please any advice would be most welcome.

watcherman

This doesn't sound right at all, unless you have spent hours streaming radio and/or Youtube/movies, you would struggle to reach that kind of usage on a BB.

I would tell them you want to raise an official dispute, and that you require some information about how that much data was used (unless of course paragraph one above does apply).

cazzy123

Apparently I used 115.50 MB on 11/04/11 alone with the first 50MB in with the contract and £2 per MB after that. I'm afraid I am just "not getting it" but if they are in the right then Virgin customers beware!

grumbler

cazzy123 wrote: »

...Apparently there is a 25mb daily allowance for blackberry usage and a 1Gb monthly allowance for internet usage.... my internet usage for the month is only 7.46 MB whilst my Blackberry usage was 773.47 MB = £218.43.....

watcherman wrote: »

This doesn't sound right at all, unless you have spent hours streaming radio and/or Youtube/movies....

Is my understanding correct that 'blackberry usage' limit applies to BB messenger only and it is this limit that was exceeded?
If so, what radio/youtube/movies have to do with this limit?

cazzy123

Apparently Grumbler as I found out today you can connect to the internet / Facebook etc. through Blackberry so its all down to which Icon you use to connect - in my case the wrong one!

grumbler

In any case I think 750Mb is a very big amount of data that is difficult to consume without streaming/downloading. So is 115+50 for 1 day.

cazzy123

It seems like to me as well but I have no real understanding of what a MB actually holds. I have WiFi at home so even if I did want to download some thing large I really wouldnt bother using the Blackberrry.

grumbler

http://www2.orange.co.uk/servlet/Satellite?pagename=OUKPersonal&c=OUKService&t=Service&cid=1096023564495&tab=2

1MB is approximately equal to:
160 wap pages
or viewing 20 web pages
or downloading 10 games**
or downloading one high quality music track***
or sending around 100 short emails each containing up to 100 words
or sending/downloading up to four video clips

cazzy123

Blimey O'Reilly Grumbler, How on earth could I get through all that? especially as on the main date in question I was on my way back from London and my phone had a dead battery for about 3 hours.

Thank you for taking the time out to assist, I am most grateful.

in_the_Cotswolds

I would question this again and ask them to explain how if you are on the BIS how you have managed to go over so much. Something is not correct, you are connected to the internet 24/7/365 with Blackberry via RIM's servers and the BIS this allows your push email, BBM and internet.

I've had Blackberrys for nearly 4 years and have never gone over my limit. My biggest bill was £70 and this was when I went to Norway for 9 days and £18 was from talking on MSN for over a hour.

I have browsed the internet, downloaded apps from Blackberry App World and have never had bills more than my monthly amount. The extras if there are any are from entering competitions at £1.50 a go and sending MMS messages.

I've just looked at my last months bill and I used a total of 56.65mb out of a total allowance of 750mb. Blackberrys are not as data hungry as some other smartphones.

watcherman

grumbler wrote: »

Is my understanding correct that 'blackberry usage' limit applies to BB messenger only and it is this limit that was exceeded?
If so, what radio/youtube/movies have to do with this limit?

I don't think so, I have heard before of people being charged if they had the incorrect settings in their BB browser, I don't have one to hand, but it is something like hotspot browser, BB Browser and Internet Browser, and connecting to the wrong one could go outside the OP's usage allowance.

OP, what browser connection are you using in the browser/options/browser configuration?