PAYG eating money unexpectedly 18 December 2022 at 4:08PM in Mobiles 8 replies 274 views

etienneg

My wife and I rarely use our mobiles. We have them just for "emergencies" such as car breakdowns, unexpectedly going to be late home messages, etc. (and keeping in touch with family when we are away on holiday in the summer). They are both Moto e6s with ASDA mobile PAYG SIMs. My credit goes down slowly even without making calls or sending texts, but it's only pence per week, so nothing to bother about.

We topped up my wife's credit on 7 December by £7 to just over £10. She has not made any calls or sent any texts since, but today received a text from ASDA saying her credit was below £4.50. This works out at over 50p per day, or £15 per month. In our view this is a contract rate, not PAYG.

Logging in to her online account confirms the current balance but gives no more information about what has used up this money. So, first question is this: Is there any way of getting information about PAYG usage?

Second question: Is there anything that could be set up on her phone (that isn't set up on mine) that would use up credit at this rate in the background, without her doing anything of which she would be aware?

We know these sums are not huge and we are not worried about what's already happened, but would like to change things so it doesn't keep happening every month in the future. As we are relative novices with smart phones, seeking advice from those with more experience seems the best thing to do!

diystarter7

etienneg said:

My wife and I rarely use our mobiles. We have them just for "emergencies" such as car breakdowns, unexpectedly going to be late home messages, etc. (and keeping in touch with family when we are away on holiday in the summer). They are both Moto e6s with ASDA mobile PAYG SIMs. My credit goes down slowly even without making calls or sending texts, but it's only pence per week, so nothing to bother about.

We topped up my wife's credit on 7 December by £7 to just over £10. She has not made any calls or sent any texts since, but today received a text from ASDA saying her credit was below £4.50. This works out at over 50p per day, or £15 per month. In our view this is a contract rate, not PAYG.

Logging in to her online account confirms the current balance but gives no more information about what has used up this money. So, first question is this: Is there any way of getting information about PAYG usage?

Second question: Is there anything that could be set up on her phone (that isn't set up on mine) that would use up credit at this rate in the background, without her doing anything of which she would be aware?

We know these sums are not huge and we are not worried about what's already happened, but would like to change things so it doesn't keep happening every month in the future. As we are relative novices with smart phones, seeking advice from those with more experience seems the best thing to do!

Hi

We used to get the same problem
We always switch off the  mobile data and that did the trick

We also did not realise that 3 mobile has massively increased prices was another bit of the unknown must had not noted their alerts then the same with asda.

But turning off the mobile data does the trick, for us it did

Thanks

BUFF

can you check on the phone if any texts have been sent?  My old, "burner" second phone which has a PAYG sim recently got some kind of malware on it that was sending texts to nos. somewhere in the Far East where no doubt they were getting a chunk of the charges. Mine went through a £10 top up in a couple of days.

savergrant

Asda prices quadrupled in sept so any mobile data it is using will now cost a lot more. And to be clear although you can customise mobile data usage some apps may be exempt.
But for your usage you should seriously consider moving to rwg mobile, as one £15 topup gives you free calls, texts, and data every month. Most 3 and asda customers upset by the price rises have seen the light.

diystarter7

savergrant said:

Asda prices quadrupled in sept so any mobile data it is using will now cost a lot more. And to be clear although you can customise mobile data usage some apps may be exempt.
But for your usage you should seriously consider moving to rwg mobile, as one £15 topup gives you free calls, texts, and data every month. Most 3 and asda customers upset by the price rises have seen the light.

we changed from 3 to asda but the 5 quid we put in, still over 4 left, next time we will just stay put.

Thanks

virgo17

As 'savergrant' mentioned, Asda increased their PAYG pricing significantly in September. Data in particular is now 10p per MB, so using 10MB, which is a tiny amount of data will cost £1.

If you wife has data switched on, even a very basic application like WhatsApp could easily be using that amount of data when she is away from a WiFi connection.

theoretica

Apps using 'background' data would be worth checking - if you go into settings - network - mobile network - app data usage you may be able to see if something has been using data.

victor2

Log in to your Asda mobile account and select Usage on the menu. That will show you your usage for the last 30 days.
If it is only data, then switch off mobile data if you don't need it.

etienneg

Thanks to all who responded. It looks like mobile data is the culprit, as several of you suggested. On my wife's phone this was turned on, but on mine it was off. (How we got to this position I don't know, but what's important is that we have now found it out.) The amount of mobile data used is broadly consistent with the cost experienced. We have now turned it off on her phone and we will monitor the situation for a while, but it certainly looks like the problem will be solved.

This has probably been going on for some time, but has only become significant since the large increase in prices by ASDA. The irony is that I changed from Three to ASDA when Three increased their prices so much!

Thanks also for the suggestion of RWG mobile as an alternative provider. It does seem that it would suit us for our usage - virtually free use! - so we will try this in the longer term.