I have a Verizon Wireless account. They talked me into upping my data limit for my plan to 8GB. I did. Today while I was driving and not using my phone I got an alert that my data was 75% used. I just checked yesterday and it was only at 3.7GB. I looked and I was at about 5.5GB. I thought, ok, maybe. 10 minutes later I got a message that my data was 90% used up. I checked and sure enough I was over 7GB. I then got another message that my data was used up. Mind you, I wasn't using my phone, but sure enough I had hit my overage. I called 611 and was told that I should up my data limit. So, to avoid huge overages I did and continued troubleshooting. They determined that my Yahoo Mail app was to blame. I deleted the app, yet my data then went up to 9.3GB. I spoke to 3 people at Verizon asking why this was doing this. My four month old Galaxy S4 was hot and kept giving network errors even after Verizon's idea to reboot. I hung up out of anger when they said there was nothing they could do. I then wrote a Facebook rant, and much to my surprise I'm not the only one. I have 3 other people who mysteriously went over their Verizon data limit today. One of the phones was sitting in a cup holder like mine. Verizon said it was the NFL mobile app that ran up over a GB of data in an hour. Verizon support states that live game streaming uses up to 350MB per hour, but this phone wasn't streaming any games on a Tuesday daytime sitting in a cup holder. Another phone was linked to Wi-Fi all day, but used over 2GB of data. I did the math. If Yahoo Mail was the culprit I would be mighty talented. Yahoo Mail has a limit of 25MB per email. So, with that said I would have had to send over 200 messages containing attachments that reached the 25MB limit in a matter of 45 minutes, while driving, while the phone was charging and sitting in my cupholder. I consider myself to be rather suave with technology, but that's a feat for myself even! I don't know if you consider this news worthy, but I think if Verizon is intentionally or unintentionally creating extra charges on people's plans (btw my bill is almost $350 a month) then this is something that the press can possibly get to the bottom of.
This is the email I sent the local news station.
