Usage controls on family share plan track overall usage, not my son's usage
Seems
Enthusiast - Level 2

My wife, son, and I are on a 4GB family share plan, and we recently put usage controls on his phone. I allocated him 2GB of data, but his data shuts off when our overall usage hits 2GB instead of his individual usage. This doesn't really help us. If I set his allotment to 4GB, he could use it up within a week and then we all have no data to use for the rest of the month. Is there any way to set a restriction for just his data usage?

Thanks!

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Re: Usage controls on family share plan track overall usage, not my son's usage
rcschnoor
Legend

I don't have an answer for you since I don't use the usage controls, but when your overall usage hits 2GB, I assume he has consumed the majority of that data. At what point in the month does your combined usage hit this level? 1wk, 2wk, 3wk? Another question, when your son is cut off I assume you and your wife still have access to the data?

Seeing as you have allocated your son 2GB and your allowance is 4GB, I assume you and your wife each use less than 1GB/month on average. I have come up with the following suggestion you can try until you can gauge how well your son has his data usage under control.

First of all, if it is available, have all of your phones set to automatically connect to wifi while in your home. No need to use cellular data if you have free wifi available.

If your combined usage hits 2GB after 1wk, then on average your son will have used 1.5GB of that amount with 0.5GB coming from you and your wife. In this case, you can increase your son's allocation to 2.5GB and that will give you and your wife 0.75GB each to use for the remainder of the month which would fall in line with your 1GB usage/month.

If your combined usage hits 2GB after 2wk, then on average your son will have used 1GB of that amount with 1GB coming from you and your wife. In this case, you can increase your son's allocation to 3GB and that will give you and your wife 0.5GB each to use for the remainder of the month which would also fall in line with your 1GB usage/month.

If your combined usage hits 2GB after 3wk, then on average your son will have used 0.5GB of that amount with 1.5GB coming from you and your wife. In this case, you can increase your son's allocation to 3.5GB and that will give you and your wife 0.25GB each to use for the remainder of the month which would also fall in line with your 1GB uasge/month.

Hope this helps until your son can get a grip on his data usage habits.

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Re: Usage controls on family share plan track overall usage, not my son's usage
Seems
Enthusiast - Level 2

I appreciate the response, and your approach may well be the best I can do. However, it really doesn't make much sense to have the data restrictions set up this way. In VZW's usage control instructions, it specifies:

"You set the monthly MB/GB limit your controlled line can use for data."

That doesn't seem to be the case. I can control when his data gets shut off in relation to our overall usage, but not his individual usage.

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Re: Usage controls on family share plan track overall usage, not my son's usage
vzw_customer_support
Customer Service Rep

Hi Seems,

Thanks for posting your concerns regarding Usage Controls on this forum. Please ensure that you have change the options settings for the line in question. Please review numbers 11 & 12 at this http://bit.ly/plz3pA link.

AntonioC_VZWSupport
Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/VZWSupport

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Re: Usage controls on family share plan track overall usage, not my son's usage
Seems
Enthusiast - Level 2

Thanks AntonioC. I have looked at those, and they don't answer my question, which is why can't I set an device limit based on the individual's usage rather than an overall usage? For example, I give my son a 2GB limit, and when HE uses 2GB he gets cut off, not when we ALL use 2GB he gets cut off. It seems to be an extremely counter-intuitive way to set up device limits.

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