On 15th Sept I had the usual Optus sms telling me that we’d used 50% of the 23GB monthly allowance- that was fine, 2 weeks into the period.
On 21/9 at 17:37 I was advised that we’d used 85% - 19.64GB… that was a bit sooner than expected, but my wife’s computer had just spent 4 hours stuck in some Windows 10 update procedure, so I guess it was conceivable.
Next day 22/9 at 14:55 we’d exceeded 23GB. Hmm, that cant be right, we hadn’t been doing all that much online.
Less than an hour later, at 15:51, the extra GB had been used! I wont repeat what I said at the time, but I’d turned the wireless router off a bit before then. In any case, our speed is far too slow to be able to download 1GB in under an hour!
I phoned Optus and after about 10 mins on hold spoke to someone, I suspect in the Philippines, for about 5 mins, who told me I’d be transfered to someone in the correct department. More time on hold, then someone else who I had to explain it all to again, and was then informed I had to talk to a different department, but they had all gone home for the day, and I’d have to call back the next day. So much for their claim to have 24/7/365 tech help- clearly this is not true for their phone help. Maybe it is on FB or Twitter, but I dont use them.
A while later at 18:04, another 1GB used ( these are costing $10 per GB, so it is adding up pretty quickly), That entire GB had been added whilst the router was turned off, as was the data on my wife’s phone, which contributes 3GB of the shared data allowance.
We live way out of town, nearly 400m back from a quiet dirt road, and about the same distance from the nearest house, and have the connection password protected, so where is all this data usage coming from, even with our router turned off?
Yesterday another 3GB mysteriously appeared, and another half a GB overnight, the modem was off all night.
Looking at my account usage details online, which is actually working today, often it is down “due to technical difficulties, try again later”, and I see the data phone number has used 1.57GB, my wife’s phone has used 417kb, yet the total data usage is 5.46GB!
I guess I’ll have to waste some more time on hold today and try to get to the bottom of this
Only another 4 weeks to wait for the NBN… I hope!