Phantom data usage

Gregphil · ‎19-06-2023

I'm on holiday with no WiFi so I've been very careful with my data usage as last time I was in this situation I ran out of data. Yesterday I had used about 2G of my 10G allowance. However last night around 4am I had a text informing me I'd used 80% and a couple of hours later (phone not being used) I get another saying 100% used. The phone is running Android 12 so I've looked at data usage by app which says 10G used but looking at the breakdown it doesn't add up to more than about 3G, biggest being 400MB. There have been no updates I can see and even if there had I can't see it being that big! Any ideas what's happening or how to investigate further. I notice other similar posts with no resolutions. Thanks

Katie_B · ‎19-06-2023

Hello @Gregphil.

Welcome the community.

I would recommend speaking with our technical care team who can see a full breakdown of your data usage and investigate this further.

The team can be contacted on +44 7953 966 250.

Katie

bristolian · ‎19-06-2023

Can you post some screenshots of your phone's data counter? I suspect the answer will lie somewhere in "I've looked at data usage by app which says 10G used but looking at the breakdown it doesn't add up to more than about 3G"

Gregphil · ‎19-06-2023

Thanks for the contact number, I tried to ring 150 but just was sent a link to the new visual service which didn't work. This is a really bad development by EE enough to make me look for an alternative operator as not being able to speak to human customer service is a real problem for me. There was a "speak to someone" link but that was just a call to 150 and into an infinite loop! I'll give them a ring in a few days when I'm back from holiday.

Gregphil · ‎19-06-2023

So I've taken a number of screen shots. There are 3 or 4 further screens but they are all in KB.

Katie_B · ‎20-06-2023

Hello @Gregphil.

Thanks for providing some screenshots of your data usage from each app.

To get in touch with our customer care on 150 without using the new visual service please wait at the first step then press option two.

Katie

PaulRo · ‎11-07-2023

Did you get anywhere with this? I've got the same problem. Unexplained high usage. Phone says I've used over 10gb but app data usage adds up to 2.7gb. I'm not on holiday though, am at home in the UK and connected to my WiFi most of the time aswell!!

Gregphil · ‎11-07-2023

Sorry I should have posted an update. I rang tech support and the guy immediately said oh it's YouTube and could see all the data that was not showing up in the counters. I wasn't entirely convinced as he was unable to explain why the app counters didn't add up and he tried to say they were just a days worth but they were set to the whole billing period. Anyway he thought the night time usage was leaving YouTube running , again I can't prove it was or wasn't but next time I'm going to ensure all apps are closed at night and maybe even go into airplane mode to prevent data use. Also keep a close eye on total data use. I think the app counters might be a phone fault, it's a Moto G60s. I've seen there was a similar issue on one of the Samsung models.

PaulRo · ‎12-07-2023

Well this sounds familiar. I am on chat to customer services and they have looked into my (alleged) usage. They are saying I have used 6GB of YouTube data from the 10-12 July. Which is ridiculous. I hardly ever use YouTube when I'm out and about, and I've been at home on those days anyhow so permanently connected to WiFi.

I've cross referenced this on my phone and app data usage is reporting 461MB on YouTube since 2nd July.

I also checked my Youtube account itself and it says I use it for 0 mins on the 10th and 35 mins on the 11th (and I was at home on WiFi yesterday so wouldn't have used mobile data anyhow).

There's definitely something amiss here!

@Christopher_G FYI

Gregphil · ‎12-07-2023

Only thing I can think of in your case is that maybe the WiFi dropped out and without you noticing you were using mobile data. However that sounds pretty unlikely. The thing with my case is that it's the second time it's happened, again whilst on holiday. The phone is actually my wife's and the first time it happened we weren't that surprised so I gifted her 3G from my account. That left my account but never seemed to appear on hers so I'm never doing that again. As a result the next holiday she was careful but this still happened. So the only thing I can think of is installing a data usage app to get my own information but I've not found a suitable one yet. Personally I think there is something very suspicious going on as there are a few posts on here that are similar. It could be a coding issue in YouTube and noone has noticed because they are on WiFi or have big data allowances. Be great to find out!