2 posts tagged “fup”
I got an email from a reader, let's call him Dan as, er that's his name! Anyway, he'd come across a previous blog post of mine whilst seeking out more info on the text message warning he'd received from 3 UK. In my original post: 3, give me back 'data usage', give me a heads up and sort out your FUP as it's FUBAR! I mentioned how I got a text message in the middle of the night telling me I'd gone over my fair use limit and that I should cease using data until the start of my next billing cycle. You can see the text message below:
Today though, it seems Dan wasn't alone - many 3 customers have experienced the same problem in the wee small hours and some, it would appear, have gone nowhere near even the 1 GB limit (let alone the 2 GB that is now the actual "secret" limit). Check out Ben Smith's article on SMS Text News: 3UK data ‘fair use’ policy problem and gerrymoth's: No internet for 7 days, I’ll never survive on his nokiAAddict blog.
The problem now seems to be resolved... at least for the time being. The silver lining is that lots of people have aired their views on 3's notification and billing systems as well as their lack of a data usage meter (we used to have one and it worked but they took it away and don't seem to realise!)
Anyway, other than the beep, beep, beeps of the texts keeping people awake at night, I wouldn't lose any sleep over the warnings. Below you can see my bill that I've just received for the period when I was warned. The first picture is of the summary. The bill quite clearly states that I've not used even one meg outside of the allowance...
And below is a break down of each day's use. You can see I kept on using the internet on my phone after the warning, albeit more sparingly! You can also deduce that the fair use allowance is clearly more than the 1 gig mentioned in the small print.
So, you may be thinking: What's eating Anthony? Well let me tell you! 3 used to provide a daily update of one's internet usage via their Planet 3 portal. Each day I could check how much I used and it was accurate. I could choose to use the service fairly, reining back my usage if need be. They long ago removed this handy tool (see the bottom picture) for no apparent reason. Since my last billing cycle I've used two different phones, one of which I had to reset (my latest handset, the N95 8GB). Therefore I have no accurate log on the phone telling me of my data use and, like I just explained, no way of checking with 3...
Which leads me to the following text message I received in the wee small hours from 3 (it's the picture just below this paragraph). This jolly note tells me I've reached my allowance and warns me I may be cut off. One presumes they mean just my internet access and not my whole phone service - but it's not 100% clear! Why no advance warning, 3? Maybe a friendly, 'You have 100MB left for the month' or some such thing. And this 'may' lark - what's that about?
I should point out that I have 3 months free mobile broadband from 3 (3 free 3!) thanks to 3mobilebuzz. They recently provided me with a dongle (you may have seen the pictures) so I won't be fully off the grid for the next 11 days! But borrowed, full sized laptops don't fit in one's pockets!