Youtube data usage

[kellyseyeno1]

I have been notified by EE that I have used 8GB of my monthly data allowance only 6 days into my data cycle. My allowance is 10GB a month.

I checked my app usage in settings and found that the highest user was only around 800MB. In total the app usage to date this cycle is around 1GB according to my phone record.

I rang 150 who told me that according to their records the biggest user this monthly cycle is Youtube with a whopping 7GB in the last 6 days! I rarely watch Youtube on my phone and certainly do not recall doing so over the past 6 days.  According to my app usage information I have used 1MB on Youtube and 97KB on  Youtube Music over the past 6 days, both piffling amounts. 

EE could not explain why there is this discrepancy between my phone record and their record of my data usage. Clearly there is something fundamentally wrong here.

I would be grateful if anyone has any views on how this issue can be remedied, 

[Katie_B]

Hi @kellyseyeno1. 

Welcome to the community. 

I understand how frustrating this must be. Could you please confirm this has happened before?

Our technical care team would be in the best position to look into this further. 

When you called did you speak with customer care or technical support?

Katie

[bristolian]

Is your phone's data counter counting period, synched with that of your billing cycle?

[kellyseyeno1]

Hi Katie B,

It might have started the previous month as my data use was higher than normal though it did not breach my limit.  This month it will definitely breach the 10gb allowance as I've already used 80% of it.

I spoke with technical support who were unable to explain why my data consumption on Youtube had gone up so much. Apparently this is not something they've encountered before.  In the meantime they have agreed to enhance this month's allowance. I have also disabled the Youtube app on my phone (It's a Google phone so it can't be deleted). 

[kellyseyeno1]

Hi bristolian,

Yes, the two are identical. 

[kellyseyeno1]

Hi,

Did you ever get this resolved? I have the same issue, except that it's Youtube (which I hardly ever use on my phone) rather than Reddit which is supposedly contributing to a massive consumption of my data allowance.

[kellyseyeno1]

Katie B,

There is clearly a technical issues that needs to be taken seriously by your technical people. Below is a link to the same issue brought up on this forum last year;

https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Mobile-Data/Re-Excessive-data-usage-in-just-12-hours/td-p/1273427

If it is not then I'd be disappointed and will probably move to another operator. 

[Ali_A]

From experience this has usually been down to an app on the device using services in background but not reporting correctly in the device data counter. 

Quite often videos on websites and apps are in fact hosted through YouTube, so while you may not be using the YouTube app, you're still accessing YouTube for the video that shows or pre-loads in the background. 

Uninstalling any recently installed or updated app tends to stop the data being consumed unexpectedly. You can then reinstall the app if needed. 

If you still need a hand our Technical Support guides on 150 will be able to help you further 🙂

Ali

[kellyseyeno1]

Hi Ali,

Thank you for your comment. I spoke again with one of the personnel in
Technical Support this morning and he suggested something similar. He
suggested that to avoid this happening I should switch off mobile data when
using my phone at home with wifi in order to avoid any usage being
accounted for against my personal allowance. He also thought that app
counters on phones don't pick up this usage as they assume that it is all
happening under wifi. This may explain the big discrepancy between my
records and those of EE.

[bristolian]

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@kellyseyeno1 wrote:
He also thought that app counters on phones don't pick up this usage as they assume that it is all
happening under wifi. This may explain the big discrepancy between my
records and those of EE.

---

I think the CS agent was being "creative" here. Phones will always use a wireless connection in preference to mobile data, individual apps will use whatever network connection the OS dictates.

The data counting facility is very well aware of which type of connection is being used.