Tutor
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5 Messages
Are we being blind sided into upgrading our plans?
First of all let me say that I have always loved ATT, they have been a life saver at times when it comes to my outrageous bills, ( when I was at fault for the charges that is) . I am not one to complain, I get very little satisfaction from doing so. I have been a lotal ATT customer for over 4 years, I am also a UVERSE customer.
I have 4 lines, before the "overages" there were 2 samsungs, and 2 Iphone 4's.
In November of 2014 I upgraded both of our teens cell phones to the Iphone 5C.
Oh happy day....NOT,
I noticed overage messages the first month, nothing had changed but the devices, so why the overages? Some glitch in the new phones? Was or is this just a pure coincidence? NO....you see from the charts, I am not blowing smoke, I am truly thinking this is a very smart plan to get all of your customers to upgrade their plans, but also very deceiving! Of course I called and told them just look at my history, no overages, no changes but the PHONES!!! You guessed right, I got the well you're using it somehow maybe your wifi is going in and out,,,of course I have ATT UVERSE,,,,,hmmmm....another coinsidence? The other phones are using on average the same amounts of data, to test I made it automatic to where the phones would not connect to any data unless my teens were at home. Well,,,,,what do you know? OVERAGES. No I don't have brats that disobey me and turn it back on, no I don't understand why you would operate this way, but I would like some input from my fellow ATT consumers!
Please see the attached information and let me know what your thoughts are!
deenalove08
Guru
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901 Messages
9 years ago
Have you checked what the phones shouwed that you actually used? See if it is the phone or AT&T. All you need to do is goto settings>cellular>go all the way to the bottom and reset. Do this at the beginning of you cycle and then on the last day before they goto bed check to see what it say and then when you get your bill compare the 2. In this area it also shows you what is using the data. I would say take a screen shot if you would want to use it to dispute the charges. If they match then somehow they are using more than before. If they are different then it would be AT&T.
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kdfederer
ACE - Expert
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13.1K Messages
9 years ago
Also, you may want to check and see if automatic updates is checked. Make sure that it is set to NOT use cellular data. Automatic updates, which updates apps, can use HUGE amounts of data in a short period.
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GeekBoy
Master
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4.1K Messages
9 years ago
There are a number of new settigns in iOS 8 that Apple released late last year that cause the iPhone to now use more data in the background, and on cellular data if not connected to wifi. Also, Apple is a little more quick to turn off wifi when the iPhone screen is alseep, so any data usage that happens at that time would become cellular data, even if there is a wifi network just 2 feet away, especially if they are streaming music through Spotify or Pandora. Another big one that hit me was Podcast autmatic downloads. Those 2 hour Apple Keynote video podcasts can easily chew up about 1GB of data by themselves I think.
The worst part is that many of these apps have their own settgings you need to turn on or off apart from any "global" settings too.
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formerlyknownas
ACE - Sage
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117K Messages
9 years ago
Check each iPhone to see what is using the large amount of data. (Settings, cellular data, scroll down to see apps used)
Restrict games and YouTube to wifi only. iCloud, AppStore should have cellular off also, to restrict to wifi.
Social media apps must be restricted in the app itself.
Facebook: turn video auto play to off.
Parent to parent. Kids have to learn to budget sometime, now would be good.
I had a more limited data plan with Verizon. One kid went over the limit ( YouTube video). I turned data off on his line for the rest of the month. Taught him how to monitor and manage his data. It never happened again. Being the only kid with an iPhone, but no data was a horrible punishment.
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crestin1216
Tutor
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5 Messages
9 years ago
Thanks for the info, I will try that, however I believe this has something to do with more than just data overages, I have U-verse , the new "iphones" I think it's a combination of all 3.
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crestin1216
Tutor
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5 Messages
9 years ago
Yes, I know kids can be irresponsible, BUT I also know I have monitored their phones settings, etc. It's just not purely coincidence that data usage doubles when they get new iphones, they had iphone4's and never went over.
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GeekBoy
Master
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4.1K Messages
9 years ago
From my experience, Apple wireless cards tend to have more issues connecting to U-Verse wireless routers than other devices. For me, if my iPhone has problems connecting to my home wifi, within a week my iPad, then my MacBook Pro will start having problems too. About a week or 2 after that, my wife's ThinkPad will start having problems. Disconnecting the power on the U-Verse router for about 30 seconds, then letting it start back up again will generally resolve all connectivity issues for me for a month or two, then the cycle repeats itself. I have a general habit of giving our dogs their heartworm medicine at 8:00pm on the last Sunday of the month. I then just power-cycle the U-Verse router following that to keep it running as smoothly as possible before I start having connection problems form the iPhones or iPads.
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formerlyknownas
ACE - Sage
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117K Messages
9 years ago
....you missed the point. The I phone 4s is a 3G phone. The new iPhone 5S are 4G LTE. With no change in usage, they will still use twice as much data with the new phones. This isn't so much irresponsible kids, as it is uninformed kids, with no limits placed on them.
My sons both have the 5S, work for delivery service and use their GPS and stream music while working,both should run up data a lot and do use more than I, yet neither have data use like your kids. Mine don't use social networking apps and after the YouTube incident, never run video on cellular.
Look in each phones cellular data use to see which apps are using the most data.
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crestin1216
Tutor
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5 Messages
9 years ago
Thanks for your reply, a friend of mine mentioned there may be some issues between At&tT and the "newer" apple products, she said she had to call and get her network passwords and everything changed? Has anyone heard of that? Her son's Macbook wouldn't work on her network?
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formerlyknownas
ACE - Sage
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117K Messages
9 years ago
Perhaps she upgraded her modem and router?
I have many devices, too many for the limited bandwidth offered by ATT ( now frontier in my state) switched to Cox cable.
But I have had best luck by switching my router. I've been using an Apple Airport Base station for 5 years. Best router ever! Works with all devices.
RE: ATT internet
Most new cell phones and tablets are connecting at faster speeds. If the home network is a single channel 2.4 ghtz network, it will have problems. The newer routers are dual channel 2.4 and 5 ghtz.
That said....there is no reason a new cell phone can't connect to an older router. The problem is when there are multiple devices and limited bandwidth. All those devices have to share the incoming bandwidth. The more devices, the smaller the portion of bandwidth each device has to work with. This leads to slow loading pages on computers and cell phones which revert to cellular.
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