Billing FAQ
Confused by charges on your bill you weren’t expecting? Here are the most common reasons for these extra charges appearing.
USAGE OUTSIDE YOUR ALLOWANCE
Not everything is included in your allowance, so some activities mean extra charges. These might be calls or texts to numbers abroad, calls to numbers such as 0845 & 0870, or calls to your voicemail.
PREMIUM RATE SERVICES
Are you a fan of reality TV? Premium rate numbers are the ones you call or text for services like competitions or voting on television shows. Premium rate numbers are charged at a higher rate.
Charges to these numbers are not covered by your allowances.
ACCESS NUMBERS
When access numbers are called, the call is forwarded on to another number or destination. If a number you call is identified as an access number, it won’t be included in your allowance unless it starts with 0207 or 0208.
ONE-OFF CHARGES AND CREDITS
There are other charges but your bill will itemise what they are.
The most common ones are bill re-issue, second Direct Debit failed payment, early termination charge and itemised billing. There are other charges but your bill will itemise what they are.
DEPOSITS
Sometimes we might ask you to pay a deposit, so you can use the EE network or activate certain services on your account.
PART CHARGES
Sometimes you might see a part charge or a part allowance on your bill. There are a few reasons why this might happen:
• Changing your price plan or upgrading
• Transferring or changing your number
• Changing your billing date.
CHANGING YOUR PRICE PLAN
If you change your price plan part of the way through your billing period, this will create part charges on your bill. Because you pay a month in advance, we’ll need to refund you for the part of your old plan you’ve paid that’s now going to be covered by your new price plan. You’ll then see the charges for your new price plan on the same bill that you they see the credit/refunds for your old price plan.
WHAT YOU’LL SEE IS:
• A pro-rata refund of the old plan (because it was paid one month in advance)
• A pro-rata charge for the new plan (to cover the date the charge became effective, until your bill date)
• A charge for the new price plan, equivalent to one month in advance.
It’s the same for allowances too. You’ll get a partial allowance and partial refund for your old price plan and a partial charge and partial allowance for your new plan (not forgetting the one month allowance in advance).
TRANSFERRING OR CHANGING YOUR NUMBER
Transferring your number from another network, or changing your number, creates part charges and refunds for both your monthly price plan charges and also the price plan allowances.
This is because the billing system recognises a change to the billing to a specific number. You’ll be charged the standard monthly charge for your price plan. You’ll also get the correct allowance for your plan. You’ll be allocated a partial allowance for your old phone number, plus a partial allowance for your phone number, but together, these will add up to your full month’s allowance.
What you’ll see is:
• A pro-rata refund of the old phone number (because it was paid one month in advance)
• A pro-rata charge for the new phone number (to cover the date the new number became effective, until your bill date)
• A charge for the new phone number, equivalent to one month in advance.
CHANGING YOUR BILLING DATE
If you change your billing date, this will create a refund because we charge you in advance for your price plan up to a specific date. If that date changes, we’ll re-calculate the charges to ensure we are charging for the correct number of days, based on the new billing date. What you’ll see is:
• A pro-rata refund of the price plan up to your original bill date
• A pro-rata charge for your price plan up to you new bill date
• A charge for your price plan, equivalent to one month in advance, based on your new bill date.
If you have recently moved from Orange to EE see the below video which will show you the billing changes:
Monitor your iPhone data usage
How to monitor your data usage on iPhone
Has your iPhone started running out of mobile data before your allowance is reset each month? Do you receive texts from EE warning that you are at 80% of your data allowance for the month? Have you ever run out of data before the month was up? If you are tired of running out of mobile data every month follow our tips and never run out of data again.
Tip 1: Track how much data you use
Before you can start to manage your iPhone mobile data usage, you need to keep tabs on how much you are using.
To view how much data you have used go to Settings > Cellular and scroll down to see your Cellular Data Usage.
Where it says “cellular” it may say “mobile” if language is set to British English / English U.k. (instead of displaying cellular)
If you have never reset this number it could be pretty big. Our advice is to get in the habit of resetting it every month, perhaps set an alert on your phone so that you remember to reset it on the day that EE resets your allowance.
To reset your statistics, scroll down to the bottom of the page and tap: Reset Statistics. Get in the habit of looking here once in a while so you can see if you are on target.
Tip 2: How to see which apps are using data on iPhone
One of the new features in iOS 7 was the ability to see & determine which apps on your iPhone are allowed to use mobile data. This feature remains in iOS 8.
When you are close to your allowance, head to Settings > Cellular and scroll down to switch off a number of apps so that you are not wasting your data allowance on them.
The other benefit of stopping some of your apps using mobile data is that it should stop them updating in the background when you are out and about – thereby preserving battery life.
Tip 3: Turn off 3G and 4G data on your iPhone
Tip 4: Stop iCloud Drive using mobile data
Tip 5: How to turn off auto play in Facebook
Tip 6: Use Safari reading list to view articles offline
We hope these tips help to keep you within your monthly data allowance, for any more information please get in touch either by phone on 01785 286666 or email on cs@m-viron.uk.com