Ukkram

Other than contacting my wife when we are apart, I have no need for airtime. We Skype our family.
As I was going to Lisbon from Porto on my own today my wife insisted I get airtime and contact her occasionally. Loaded €5 at the Vodafone kiosk yesterday and voila. It showed up in an email.

Today I tried to phone her from Lisbon but before the call went through a message came up to say that I have only 18 cents left.
I have not used the phone at all since I downloaded the airtime.
Then I remembered that some months ago I bought €10 airtime and before I could use it it also just vanished.

RichardHenshall

Was it for voice and data and your phone's mobile data has used it?

Ukkram

The Kiosk only allows airtime and not data.My phone has been set to not use airtime for data if not using wifi.

RichardHenshall

Might my.vodafone.pt provide some insight?

BillBullock

My wife only pays for the PAYG scheme with NOS; she only makes telephone calls and sends texts from her smart phone. However, she recently lost about €12 from her account due to a firmware or software update which switched on data usage without her noticing. Apparently a lot of data (about 6GB) was consumed by apps that were communicating in the background. This is the second time it has happened. She now knows that she has to regularly check her phone to make sure that data usage is switched off.

Ukkram

My daughter phoned me from a fixed line in the UK to my mobile in Lisbon. Does this cost me any airtime as well?

BillBullock

That call should not cost you anything.

BillBullock

Do you have a smart phone or a basic mobile phone Ukkram?

RichardHenshall

For a conventional voice call to a Portuguese mobile it shouldn't cost you anything (though it might have cost her plenty!). If she used some form of VOIP call (Skype, WhatsApp, Messenger etc) it's possible for a smart phone to use data to receive the call (which would be at your expense if you're on PAYG voice/data). Though if mobile data was disabled, as mentioned previously, this wouldn't (or shouldn't) happen.

Ukkram

Samsung S8.smartphone. The Data Usage is set to OFF.

BillBullock

My wife has Samsung S8 as well and, somehow, the data usage switches on occasionally. Keep checking it especially if you have WiFi switched on as updates happen when you are charging at home.

Ukkram

It cannot switch on by itself if you have disabled it. It will tell you that there are apps needing updates but will not do so automatically. Turn on your wifi and update them manually.

To turn updates on or off, follow these steps:

1. Open Google Play.
2. Tap the hamburger icon (three horizontal lines) on the top-left.
3. Tap Settings.
4. Tap Auto-update apps.
5. To disable automatic app updates, select Do not auto-update apps.

BillBullock

Thanks Ukkram. I have set her phone to auto update apps over wifi only. The other data settings are in Settings and they are correct at the moment. I will monitor her settings more often in future as she tells me she has twice lost about€12.

Ukkram

Don't thank me as I have done these settings but I have still lost €10 about 2 years ago without me using the damn phone and then another €10 after. Now I have lost €5.00 this week that I uploaded to my phone to contact my wife while in Lisbon. The first call to her was aborted due to only 18c remaining and I had not even used the phone.

Score76

Perhaps you have a virus on your phone?

I used to use a spare android handset with a payg sim from Meo which chomped through 20€ of credit within a few days of me topping it up. When i complained in the Meo shop (Silves) the guy could see the premium rate messages on the billing data being sent by the virus despite nothing happening on the handset to indicate anything. He refunded me and reported the service.

Perhaps worth a visit to Voda?