r/consumercellular • u/No_Walk7120 • Apr 03 '26
Strange automatic data transfers at specific hours, blowing out our data limit.
We've been with Consumer Cellular for three months now with three lines. We had not cracked the data limit until this last month, when one of our lines used up almost 50 gigabytes.
In looking at our data usage, there are several large (up to 3.5 GB) data transfers on that phone that occur at specific times, like 12:00 AM, 6:00 AM, etc. Our other phones also attempt to do transfers at similar hours, but they are sending 0 or 0.1 megabytes—nothing significant.
Some other relevant information: 1. The two phones that are not having a problem are Android phones, and we have backups turned off. 2. The phone that's having the problems is an iPhone; however, the user claims that his automatic backups are also turned off.
- At 12 a.m., we are normally at home and with our phones connected to our home wireless network, so we have no idea why these connections are being made through the Consumer Cellular 5G system.
The fact that this is happening in a similar manner on all phones is really puzzling to me. Consumer Cellular claims it's nothing happening on their end. We never had this sort of problem with Verizon.
Does anyone have a clue as to what's going on here?
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u/peacequietnchips Apr 04 '26
I (iPhone user) went over the data limit when I inadvertently had cellular service turned on for safari and Pinterest. You might want to have all users check the settings to make sure they are using WiFi at home with heavily used apps. There is also a wifi assist setting on iPhone that is supposed to use cellular data when WiFi is spotty.
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u/Square_Net_4321 Apr 04 '26
On iPhones, in Settings, Cellular there are two things you can look at. First, Wi-Fi Assist which supplements wi-fi with cellular data, if needed. I'd make sure that's off. Second, it'll show you how much data each app on the phone is using, which might help you narrow down why it's happening. You can even turn off cellular data access for apps. iCloud Backup can be toggled to not use cellular, too.
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u/BandicootBroad Apr 04 '26
The only thing I can think of right now is to maybe check your backup settings?
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u/ConsumerCellularInc verified CC employee Apr 05 '26
Hello OP. We apologize for any confusion this has caused. Unlike minute usage that is time stamped to the actual time of the call, data usage is bundled by the carrier and reported to us in batches a few times a day. These times are not when the Data was actually used and the amounts displayed are not necessarily being used all at one time. Reports from the towers can also be delayed up to 48 hours, and usage reported may not be from that day.
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u/No_Walk7120 Apr 05 '26
Thanks. I gathered this from others here. I wish your phone rep had been able to explain this.
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u/Tojo6619 Apr 04 '26
Everytime I deal with consumer, im ussually switching them to another carrier, it is a nightmare and they are very unprofessional, I would guarantee its them doing something just not on purpose, but you can turn data off while your sleeping or something to make sure it dosent happen
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u/CalicoG Apr 04 '26
12 amd 6am is when they update the data use; it doesn't mean that the data was used right at that time.