Recently, went to a nearby grocery store to run some quick errand for mom, and as I was waiting for the shopkeeper to finish attending to other customers, there was a bunch of guys in college uniform, standing near by, totally engrossed in some discussion. And the way they sounded frustrated, I simple couldn’t refrain myself from paying attention.
One of them had probably purchased a smart phone recently and was sharing his experience – '300 rupaie ki chapat lag gayi yaar. Bade josh main aakar naya phone liya aur lene ke 2 ghante ke ander hi pata nahi kis baat ke paise kaat liye, abhi to maine phone theek se explore bhi nahi kiya..ab gharwaalon ko kya kahunga'. The second one interrupted - 'arre customer care call kar'. The first one - 'kiya tha kai baar lekin vo har baar yehi bolte hain, apne data download kiya hae.. par koi nahi batata aisa kaise ho gaya '. The third one - 'mere saath to bahut baar aisa ho chuka hae..GPRS deactivate karane ke baad bhi'.
I guess each one of us at some point of time has faced a similar problem. Unwarranted deductions by service provider for a service you never subscribed to, GPRS deductions, cell downloading data without your knowledge, thereby wasting your MBs, are pretty common. I have a dual SIM phone and was using docomo as my second SIM. Being dissatisfied with the service I thought of discontinuing it and that's when it started giving a headache as every 1-2 seconds it started flashing a message asking to recharge, to the extent that I couldn't use my 'smart' phone at all.
Well to cut it short, when you buy a new cell phone, most often, there are settings which, by default are either enabled or you accidentally enable them while exploring your phone (like clicking on your browser, gmail, FB icon etc., your provider not even once confirms that would you like to activate GPRS with your current plan) and since you already have balance/credit in your account it starts downloading data WITHOUT even asking for your final permission (Yes, service providers purposely play dirty!) and the money starts getting deducted (tick-tock-tick-tock). The same holds true for those sick ads that keep popping every now and then when you are connected and even get downloaded (blame it on your super slippery touch screen) without giving a message like- 'Are you sure you want to download this service?'.
In case of smart phones, this can be controlled to a large extent by checking a few settings on your cell (that, however, doesn't mean your service provider will stop charging you unreasonably, they will find some other way for sure!).
Go to settings option and make sure the following settings are off, if you are not using a GPRS plan,
Wi-fi – Should not be automatically turned on.
Auto Update - Should be off.
Mobile networks - Use packet data/ data roaming should be off.
Accounts and Sync - Background data and auto sync should be disabled.
Apps - Update notifications are off.
(And yes, your salesman/rep would never proactively tell you much about these settings. Remember they’ve incentives to be earned and commitments towards certain brands to pitch their sales!)
60 -70% of your unwanted deductions (only in case of smart phones) would be taken care off. For the remaining issues, don't ever hesitate to bully your connection provider or phone manufacturer :D
Happy GPRSing :D
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