I recently copped a large mobile phone bill from my friendly mobile service provider – instead of my normal $49 per month it was over $200! The culprit – 3G data.
Now I get 2.5G of data included each month but I exceeded this by 1.2GB in August and the only thing I can think that I have changed in my usage habits was that I started using Music Beta by Google, Amazon Cloud Player and my own self hosted Subsonic.
My providers billing system only sends you an email saying, in effect “your bill is available to view on our website”. Given I expected it to be $49 I didn’t check it – stupid me. In any event, why can’t they just attach a brief summary of your usage and the months charges to the email? Logging on to your account is just another step in the process and its just not necessary.
So, tip for new players, don’t go with a mobile provider that fails to warn you when you are approaching your data usage allowance (because lets face it, its in their interest not to tell you they can graft you if they don’t) and be warned that using cloud based music players has a detrimental effect on your 3G data allowance – watch out!