overcharged for vodafone dongle use

Edinburghian

Hi,

I've had a Vodafone dongle for twelve months that I use to access the internet from home on my laptop. For about £21 a month I get 10GB of data, if I exceed that there's a charge. I've always been very careful not to exceed my download limit as I am on a very limited income.
Last month I received a bill for just over £200 and was contacted by Vodafone to be told this money would be automatically debited from my account.

I contacted Vodafone and explained that this was a mistake as I am always careful not to exceed the limit. They accessed my account whilst I was on the phone and said that the charges made corresponded with the usuage and were correct. I said that I understood that they must have systems in place to make sure customers don't exceed their usuage and then fraudulently try and claim that they didn't but that I wanted to know what the procedure was to formally dispute the charge. The person I spoke with said that he was a member of the billing department and it was his decision not to proceed further with my dispute. He said that this would be sent this to me in writing to my email, which it hasn't been. He also said that he would send me evidence showing on what day I had exceeded the limit, as my online account didn't have information dating back far enough to allow me to see for myself.

He then went to say I should change my password as customers often report people remotely accessing their dongle devices and then using them to obtain free wifi. I said that if this is a common occurence surely they must have a more thorough process for investigating disputed bills. The rep that I spoke to said they didn't.

I was hoping that somebody on this forum might be able to please offer me some advice about how best to proceed with this? Or, if possible, I would appreciate a response from another Vodafone rep.

I have a learning difficulty and ongoing issues with anxiety and the fear that I may not have this money returned to me is causing me a lot of stress and worry.

Many thanks in advance to anyone who is able to offer some help.

Xbigman

Is it a dongle that makes a WiFi connection through another device or a mobile dongle that makes a direct connection through the mobile network?

And do you leave it plugged in or unplug it between using the internet?

And what operating system are you using?


Darren

Edinburghian

A mobile dongle that makes a direct connection through a mobile network.

I unplug it.

Windows 10.

Thank you!

Xbigman

OK. Make sure that windows 10 has all the privacy settings turned to off and the option to piggy back on your computer turned off.
Unplugging is good. Unfortunately you can't set Windows 10 to metered supply with a direct dongle but the above should reduce the W10 usage.

£200 is about 10GB extra usage with Vodafone. That's not a lot if you accidentally download something big. Going forward you need to leave a few GB unused each month and watch your usage like a hawk.

You should definitely write to Vodafone with an official complaint and get the details of your usage and when. I suspect you did use that capacity but you might get something knocked off.

I have the same set up myself with a dongle using a 6GB EE data sim. One night I suddenly lost 1.1GB off the sim capacity whilst doing nothing. Looking at my 30 day usage record from W10 it was 1.1GB lower than the sim registered. I still have no idea why.

Incidently, the £20 for 10GB Vodafone deal is now for 20GB. Ask Vod if you can upgrade for free, if not cancel and sign back up to the new deal.



Darren

artyclarty

Has your laptop updated recently? I'm pretty certain W10 has had a few beefy updates in the last month or so at least a few GB in size. Could this be worth looking into?

kwikbreaks

What you need to do to avoid hefty bills is have Vodafone set a credit limit on the account or move to a provider that will set a cap such as EE.

Marvqn1

What way do you monitor your data usage? Do you use software that came supplied with the dongle? If so, the software might still show the data usage for that period so you can clarify for sure if you used that much data.

As said above, the best decision is to get a mobile broadband plan which includes a data cap. EE mobile bb even include a data cap by default.

TryingToWork

Maybe a mobile dongle is not a good idea for me if this sort of thing happens. I could not cope with massive charges like that. :eek: