I have been a long time customer with Verizon. Our data usage has become unmanageable!. We have 5 iphones on our family share plan. We began with 10 GB after upgrading one of our phones & being talked into the family share plan by the in-store salesperson! We had the unlimited plan on all lines until then! This is where the trouble started. Each month our data has increased when we've made no changes to how we use our phones. Each time I increase our limit our usage always goes up! We have high speed wireless at home and all use it when at home. We also use Wifi at work. Our kids are in school all day so their usage wouldn't increase drastically.
We are now up to 16 GB. Two of the lines doubled in recent months. I've called Verizon on 2 occasions and spend at least 30-45 minutes on the phone talking with either a Verizon rep or an Apple rep to help determine what the problem is. I honestly believe Verizon is ripping us off! This last time I put what I had learned about data usage to a test using 3 of our 5 phones. I went the cellular data and turned off all apps. I left on the main cellular data so the statistics data would still show. I made sure all apps were closed in the background. I turned off all notifications and turned off all email accounts from checking for mail. I shut down location services also. This should have completely shut down data usage on each phone while they weren't being used. I cleared the data usage statistics on each phone and went to the home screen on each phone. (I took screen shots of each step on all phones for evidence) I waited 5 minutes to go in and check the statistics for data usage on each phone. Guess what I found? Data usage on all 3 phones when nothing was being used!!! After investigating further, I found out the data usage on all phones was under "System Services" When I asked the customer service rep on my last call about this, she offered to give me a credit for usage but would not tell me what the credit would be for or how the phones were using System Services when all data was supposed to be restricted. What a scam - I'm paying $450+ a month now for 5 lines and am stuck with contracts on all of them. It is enough to make anyone mad. Has anyone experienced this and if so, can you provide any help on how to fix this?
