Data usage not corresponding to actuals

[TIANEW45]

I am having a huge issue. I have had Verizon for literally 3 days on my iPhone 6S Plus, and it claims my usage is at about 6.56 GB ALREADY. There is no way that is even possible. I am not some sort of crazy power user on my phone 24/7.  I have a reliable WiFi connection at home and at work, and use my device sparingly in between. I called Customer Service, and their advice was to turn off WiFi support....which I did. Also turned celullar data off for 95% of my apps. Just sitting here and not using my phone at all (while it is on WiFi), the data I have available has gone from 19% down to 18%. Something is seriously wrong. I have an 8GB plan, which should be more than enough to cover a month, but it has barely even covered 3 DAYS! This is either fraudulent charging, or something is really wrong with my data plan. Needless to say, I am very unhappy and if this is the kind of practices Verizon has, I will seek out a new carrier as soon as possible. 6.56 GB of data gone in 3 days is totally extreme. That would mean I need around 60 GB of data a month. I doubt I'd be able to do that if I was streaming music, playing games, and watching YouTube videos all day long on my cellular data. Makes NO SENSE! TOTALLY OUTRAGEOUS.

[Weth]

Was this a brand new phone?  Did you have an iPhone before and you were restored from iCloud so your apps and data were on the new phone.  We see this when the restore was done over cellular as you left the store. 

The he apps you turned off for data also have a number that indicates how much cellular data was used, what apps or system services used the data.  This should be easy to figure out what used the data. 

[TIANEW45]

vzw_customer_support I went from an iPhone 6, to an iPhone 6s Plus. I did restore my new phone from the backup of my old one, but I did it from my own home computer and was on WiFi. I looked at the data used, but it took over my old information from the other phone, so it was not accurate. I looked at My Verizon, and it said 42% of it was audio...NO clue what would be causing that. I do not stream music all day every day. I listen to Amazon Radio on my car rides from work and back, which is about 45 minutes a day, but I only did that 1 day during this time range.

It just makes absolutely no sense what is completely eating up my data. It's pretty sad to have a new iPhone that can do all these things and is so awesome and fast, yet you can't use it for anything it's intended for and have to turn cellular off completely when not on WiFi. And actually I've found the last couple days, that even when I am ON WiFi, my phone is still using cellular data. I can't figure out where it's going (and yes I've turned off WiFi Assist). Eating up over 6 GB of data in 3 days just goes not seem at all possible to me with my normal usage. Ugh!

[Weth]

Go to Settings - Cellular , scroll to bottom and hit reset counters.

Now the numbers that go with each app listed in Settings - Cellular will tell you exactly which app is using the data. You can turn that particular app off cellular or do some other changes to prevent it from using data. I keep my iPhone 6 Plus connected to cellular data all the time and it does not use data. Also keep in mind the time stamp on My Verizon on data use is not the time the data is used, but the time it is reported from the tower. This can be often delayed 6 hours from actual use.

With audio being reported as type, do you have purchased songs that would have been downloaded?

[TIANEW45]

I downloaded my purchased songs over WiFi...but it's possible they may not have been all downloaded by the time I got on my WiFi network. I'm perplexed that I have ALL the cellular data shut off for my Music app, yet the count keeps ticking up on the data usage. Even if I was streaming music from the Amazon Radio app, I don't know how it could account for that much data usage in such a short amount of time.

You keep yours connected to cellular all the time and don't use data? How do you manage that?

[Weth · Accepted solution]

I suspect it is still downloading music from the setup. If it does download over cellular. The way Apple does it is it first just setups the placeholders for the apps and content so the phone can start working, but then continues to download the actual apps and content in the background, sometimes for many hours depending on how much you have. So even if it said restore complete, it was not all the items but just placeholders. At least that is the way it works on iCloud.

If it is setup downloading of purchased music, turning of music app data may not stop it since it is setup and not buying new music. Also, I have seen in the past where after turning off cellular data for an app, you need to reboot the phone for it to effect.

[TIANEW45]

Thank you for the advice, I will try to reboot and see what happens. Hopefully it was just the issue of it downloading and getting everything on the phone set up, though it's upsetting that I was on WiFi and it would still do it over the cellular network! It's also upsetting that even when the phone is sitting here unused, it will continue to dock points for data. Even using the phone all day on cellular, no clue how I could have racked up that many GBs in 3 days.

How do you leave your cellular usage on and not use any data? I'm curious about what you meant by that comment.

[Weth]

What can happen if it starts downloading on cellular, it will stay for that connection for the full process. LTE data networks are fast. You can use easily use 3 to 5 GB in just 1 hour with LTE speeds at full bore.

I have high confidence your data will calm down back to normal levels.

[vzw_customer_support]

Thanks for bringing your data usage concern to our attention TIANEW45. We would love to partner with you and confirm that your data usage is being reported accurately. If you can reply to the private message that we sent then we can work together and address your data usage and reporting concern.

ArnettH_VZW
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