Vodafone Data Usage Period

mrich536

I noticed today that my current monthly data usage showed I had used 166Mb, leaving approx 334Mb at the time of writing from my 500Mb allowance. Upon checking this appears to be because of data usage on the 10th October. However this usage was paid for by me under the advance charges of my 15th September bill which covered the period 11th September to the 10th October. It is detailed on my monthly bills as YP2 24IPN 300m 500t 500MB, followed by the period. For my 15th September this was shown as '11 Sep to 10 Oct'.

I would therefore assume usage between '11 Sep to 10 Oct' should be taken out of that period allowance, not out of the current one, i.e. 11 Oct to 10 Nov.

I appreciate that the Vodafone systems do say there may be a 72 hour delay for charges to appear but to me it seems unfair as there was no grace period at the start. Besides the voice call allowance always keeps up.

Has anyone else noticed this too on their bills and if so what have Vodafone told you? I have emailed them and I'm waiting for a reply. This happened to me earlier this year and they corrected it then saying it was a one off. I did point out I don't delay my direct debit by 72 hours due to system limitations at my end. :laugh:

OneADay

You service charge is your normal tariff which includes your 500MB data per month.
But since its not possible to guess how much data you are going to use in advance, your data is measured a month behind the bill.
So should you have increase 500MB in this month - from Oct 10th, you will pay for the extra out of allowance data with the November bill.

grumbler

OneADay wrote: »

But since its not possible to guess how much data you are going to use in advance, your data is measured a month behind the bill.

And the question that you failed to answer was why 166Mb used on the last day of the previous billing month (de facto, no guessing) affect the monthly allowance of the new billing month.
Normally the OP doesn't have to be charged for using 166Mb in the previous month and 500Mb in the current month. However, this seems not to be the case at Kafkian Vodafone.

OneADay

grumbler wrote: »

And the question that you failed to answer was why 166Mb used on the last day of the previous billing month (de facto, no guessing) affect the monthly allowance of the new billing month.
Normally the OP doesn't have to be charged for using 166Mb in the previous month and 500Mb in the current month. However, this seems not to be the case at Kafkian Vodafone.

The OP had a bill on 15th Sep for Service Charges for date range 11th Sep to 10th Oct. That bill should have some Usage information upto another date (not specified by OP) for Calls and Data outside of allowance in previous month.

Going forward from the unknown date (which is likely to be 10th Oct or earlier, single date not a date range) the current month is being shown by Kafkian Vodafone (as you put it) to show the customer how much they are using this month and so they can prevent themselves from going above 500MB.

grumbler

The OP is probably brighter then me and will make sense from this explanation, but I cannot.
According to the OP, the current billing month is Oct 11th - Nov 10th.
166Mb are shown as used on Oct the 10th - the last day of the previous billing month.
I think the OP has to be able to use 500Mb in the current month without going above 500Mb.

mrich536

Many thanks for replies so far grumbler and OneADay. Just to be clear the data usage on the 10th Oct was a download by me in an effort to (now mistakenly it seems) use up some of the balance of the previous months data allowance as guided by both the My Vodafone app, website for my account and a third party data monitoring app I use.

I received the response below today from Vodafone:

'I can see that you have not been charged anything in both the bills (September and October) for data usage.

Both the bills show you have been charged only the line rental which is £25.54 +VAT £5.10 = £30.64.

Please note that as you are on anniversary billing you receive the allowance on 1st of every month. You pay for the line rental in advance for the succeeding month however the allowance is calculated from 1st of every month and not as per your billing cycle which is 11-10th of each month.

I trust this helps.

Kind regards,'

I have emailed back for clarity as the answer does not match the detail both on the My Account page of the Vodafone website and that in the My Vodafone app which both state that my line rental and data usage is for the periods 11th of the current month to the 10th of the next. The My Vodafone app also resets data usage on the 10th without any intervention on my part and also warns of a 72 !hours discrepancy !which runs contrary to that stated of 240 hours.

Thanks again for your advice. I will post at a later date to say how I get on. Though not hopeful. Will be happy if everything just ran in parallel.

mrich536

The latest reply from Vodafone customer service now adds to the confusion as they now don't mention anything about the first of each month. So will be emailing again but asking for someone senior to look into it and give a definitive answer.

The latest reply was:

I have checked your account and can confirm that your price plan is of £25.83 (exc VAT) which includes 300 minutes, 500 texts and 500 MB of data usage. There is additional service pack of unlimited UK to UK texts and calls.

I would also like to inform you that your billing cycle is 11th to 10th of next month that means your inclusive minutes starts from 11th of every month and ends on 10th of next month.

I trust the information provided above resolves your query.

carrieparkinson

hi i work for vodafone (have done for well over a year) and as far as im aware the internet resets same date as your minutes and texts....

Vodafone

Hi mrich536,

If you would like me to clarify anything regarding your price plan or allowance, you can email me personally via the address here with WRT135 FAO Heidi in the subject and could you also include a link to this thread.

I will be more than happy to clear this up for you.

Thanks,

Heidi
Web Relations Team
Vodafone UK