Not understand Shareable Data

[tamxtell]

For the past couple months I have exceeded my data limit and I cannot figure out why; I'm wondering if it has something to do with my sister's shareable data.

I currently have 3 phones on my account: mine, my sister's and my brother's. We each have 3 separate plans. I have 3gb on my plan, my brother has 1gb on his plan, and my sister has 1gb of shareable data on her plan. I don't use my phone for any streaming or anything, and I work 8 hour days. When I'm home on on my laptop, so I can't figure out how I'm blowing through 3gb of data every month. Is my sister's shareable data the cause? How does it work when only she has shareable data and my brother and I do not?

[NFtoBC]

In the 'My Account section, you should be able to see the usage patterns of each participant on your account. Also your detailed bill also available in 'My Account' should help describe what is happening, including when & how much data is used.

Have a look at Data Usage, Data notifications, and this link found by @Mobility_Princess describing a Data Manager tool.

Let us know if these help, or if you need help interpreting your bill.

[Mobility_Princess · Accepted solution]

What you are describing is very typical of a shared plan that is set up incorrectly. It sounds like you are set up to share. If a shared plan is set up correctly there would be one user with a data add on. Say for instance you would have a 3gb data add on and then the other 2 users would not be paying anything to have data on their lines, just the voice part of their plan and they would share the data you have. That's why family plans are cheaper. Right now a family of 3 who choose unlimited nationwide calling would each pay $65 for the unlimited calling portion and one person would have a data add on. Say 4gb for $45. So we've got the $65 x 3 = then our $45 for 4gb bringing the total plan to $240. If someone has set the plans up wrong, than you have one person with the $65 and the 4gb for $45 paying $110, plus another person with the $65 and a 1gb for $25 add paying $90 and now a third family member paying $65 and then I don't know let's say the 2.5gb for $35 for $100 and now the entire account is paying $300. Even though each individual user has a data add on, they will share data. The way the plans are set up, Telus can't make it so that you don't share if you are on the current share plans. Now if any of you have older plans or one of you have older plans than one or two or you might not be sharing but, it sounds like at least 2 of you are sharing. You're best to call in *611 or chat in to find out who is sharing what and how to best optimize your plans. You may want to three way call in with whoever else is on the account to have everyone's permission for plan changes. 

[tamxtell]

Thank you very much, I will definitely be calling tomorrow. I received my bill for this month and I'm being charged an extra $90 for going over my data last month! Which makes no sense because I have my account set up to lockdown my data completely after $40 worth of overage has accumulated. On top of that, I'm only 10 days into my new cycle and I just received a text saying I've used 75% of my data already. Something is definitely not right.

[Mobility_Princess]

No problem! I think there may have been a misunderstanding on how the data notification work as well! Telus will notify you via sms/email at certain thresholds of your data usage based on what you have set up in your data manager which you can modify on telus.com/the telus app but, those are just reminders and they do carry a delay. Telus will block you at a certain threshold as well but, not before you have incurred charges. You will automatically be blocked at $50 in data overages per line. You can change that in the data manager to $25 but, again it's per line. So you can easily rack up to $90 if you didn't know this or have it set lower 😞 and the SMS notifications can carry a delay. They are usually real time but, they can carry a delay of up to 6 hours especially if streaming is involved.