- Jan 28, 2011
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Hi, just wanted to let some people know about an experience I've had recently. I live in a fringe area and our house has steel siding, so we've been using a Network Extender since 2010. There have been issues here and there, but nothing big. Enter the Advance Calling update that was released last December. Everything seemed to be fine after that, until recently I noticed our usage was very high (we're still on a Nationwide plan with limited minutes and unlimited data). Originally I assumed it was due to the holiday season, but then after the holidays we were still going over our allotted minutes. This was odd since we almost never had that happen and now it happened 3 months in a row.
So I looked at each line's usage, and mine was the highest of anyone's, which was odd since most of my calls are M2M, nights and weekends, or friends and family calls, which are excluded. Before this happened my minutes used per month averaged around 100-200 minutes, and now I was around 800-900 minutes, and we were getting around $100-150 in overages per month.
The biggest oddity of all was in my call log portion of the bill. Almost every call I made had a second call made, at the exact some time, for the same duration as my legitimate call, and every one of these other calls were going to different numbers, but all to tue same area code in Grand Prairie, TX. For example, I make a call to my brother (M2M call) at 1:13 that lasts 5 minutes, and on the bill there is another call to a number in Grand Prairie, TX placed at 1:13 for 5 minutes as well. So every call that I made that shouldn't have counted against our plan's allotted minutes did count, so no free minutes on my line at all. But worse than that most of the calls that did count against my minutes had the same ghost calls to Texas as well. So I had no free minutes and my peak minutes were doubled, which led to massive overages.
I called into Verizon, and the CSRs started a trouble ticket to find the cause of the issue. About a week later they found the cause, the Advance Calling update that went to my phone was apparently never meant to work with a Network Extender, and the result was ghost calls sent to Grand Prarie, TX and decimating my allotted minutes. The reason this didn't show up on any other line of our share plan is that I'm the only one who had both the Advance Calling update on my device and used a Network Extender to get signal. The Verizon techs had mentioned others were having the same issues as well, but the reason it wasn't necessarily more widespread is that most people didn't know this was happening, since the newer plans give you unlimited minutes.
So if you have a device with Advance Calling installed and activated on it, use a Network Extender for signal in a fringe area, and are on an older plan that doesn't have unlimited minutes, check your bill and make sure you're not getting overcharged because of this bug.
I was informed to leave Advance Calling turned off until mid April, by which time they are supposed to have a patch for this bug.
So I looked at each line's usage, and mine was the highest of anyone's, which was odd since most of my calls are M2M, nights and weekends, or friends and family calls, which are excluded. Before this happened my minutes used per month averaged around 100-200 minutes, and now I was around 800-900 minutes, and we were getting around $100-150 in overages per month.
The biggest oddity of all was in my call log portion of the bill. Almost every call I made had a second call made, at the exact some time, for the same duration as my legitimate call, and every one of these other calls were going to different numbers, but all to tue same area code in Grand Prairie, TX. For example, I make a call to my brother (M2M call) at 1:13 that lasts 5 minutes, and on the bill there is another call to a number in Grand Prairie, TX placed at 1:13 for 5 minutes as well. So every call that I made that shouldn't have counted against our plan's allotted minutes did count, so no free minutes on my line at all. But worse than that most of the calls that did count against my minutes had the same ghost calls to Texas as well. So I had no free minutes and my peak minutes were doubled, which led to massive overages.
I called into Verizon, and the CSRs started a trouble ticket to find the cause of the issue. About a week later they found the cause, the Advance Calling update that went to my phone was apparently never meant to work with a Network Extender, and the result was ghost calls sent to Grand Prarie, TX and decimating my allotted minutes. The reason this didn't show up on any other line of our share plan is that I'm the only one who had both the Advance Calling update on my device and used a Network Extender to get signal. The Verizon techs had mentioned others were having the same issues as well, but the reason it wasn't necessarily more widespread is that most people didn't know this was happening, since the newer plans give you unlimited minutes.
So if you have a device with Advance Calling installed and activated on it, use a Network Extender for signal in a fringe area, and are on an older plan that doesn't have unlimited minutes, check your bill and make sure you're not getting overcharged because of this bug.
I was informed to leave Advance Calling turned off until mid April, by which time they are supposed to have a patch for this bug.
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