Over 50% data used in one day yet usage shows very little data used?

Ok so I got my iphone yesterday. On the 4gb plan with hotspot. Downloaded and installed all pertinent apps, played around with the phone a bit, used hotspot to connect my ipad for a little while etc. Then later on at night I get a text saying I am up to 50% usage. Now I know my data resets to a new month in the next couple days so I am not that worried but what has me confused is that the usage on my verizon shows as 212 mb, the usage on the phone shows as about 500 mb, and I rarely go over 1 gb in any month with my old droid.

I understand that the first month may be screwy but when we got my daughter her i5, nothing like this happened and she is only on a 2gb plan. Should I call verizon and ask? Any idea what the discrepancy is about and will it return to normal next month? I am fine with monitoring my usage so I don't go over but if the indicators on the phone or web aren't even close this has me concerned.

For what its worth I think before I got my phone I looked and the data on my verizon showed more than what it does currently, yet when I look into the "details" I can clearly see the switch from "unlimited" to usage based 4gb.

Accepted answers

dimap52

Your data allowance for the first month is pro-rated. Meaning if you have, say, 5 days left on your billing cycle when you start the 4 Gig plan, then your pro-rated allowance for the remainder of the billing cycle is: 4 Gig /30 days x 5 days left = 667 Meg. So depending on how many days you actually have left, 213 meg can certainly be half of your pro-rated allowance for the first month. At the start of the next billing cycle you will receive your full 4 gig.

Oh, and watch that tethering. PC's can pull down 10 times the data a phone can to display the same page, for a multitude of reasons. Although 500 meg over the course of a day seems a lot. When I had the 4Gig tethering for 6 days before going back to the 2 gig plan my usage didn't go up any noticable extent. HOWEVER, I only used USB to tether, I did NOT use Wi-Fi hotspot, and I'm on a droid Razr M, not an iPhone, where there have been numerous reports of severe overages using the WiFi Hotspot. I might try and use mine again for a whole month and see what happens, but I'm definitely not wanting overages.

All comments

dimap52

_tpc_

Oh! Thank you for your reply! I believe my data resets tomorrow, but maybe I will call to be sure. My thought was that since I had used I dunno say 800mb on my unlimited plan, that they would just back out the charges for that plan and charge me for the current plan which would be 4gb worth of data which would cover the 800mb plus anything else I used no problem.

So basically what you are saying (this is confusing still but I think I get it) is that they are going to charge me for, i dunno, 27 days worth of unlimited data, and then 3 days worth of 4gb data of which I am only allotted whatever the prorated amount of data is.

On second thought I should probably call right away. You would think they would train the reps in the store to explain it to you when you get a new phone. Mine said nothing other than "here is your new phone".

dimap52

Yeah, that sounds right, 27 days on unlimited, and 3 days on 4 Gig, but wow, that's only 400 meg pro-rated, and you said you've already used 500 meg on the phone, you're gonna get stuck with a $15 1 Gig overage now. What you should have done, is to have them BACKDATE the 4 Gig plan to the beginning of the billing cycle, then your 800 meg + whatever you used now would count against a full 4 Gig allowance. Maybe they can still do that when you call so you can avoid overages. Good luck :smileyhappy:

_tpc_

So I called to see about any overages, and I was assured there wouldn't be. However, what you said earlier about the prorating of the data plan was confirmed by a verizon rep. What they said is that is how the system automatically handled it, and that if there is a overage during that first month, the customer doesn't get billed for it. Now I also assume that to mean if there is a "small" overage, not like 150GB of overage lol.

At any rate, probably a good idea for anyone reading this with a similar question to NOT take it as gospel and call in to confirm with verizon themselves. In my case I am sure I didn't go over because I never got the text saying I hit 75, 90 or 100% or any overage. But I specifically waited to do my upgrade close to the end of the usage cycle so I wouldn't have to worry too much about something like this.