Scared to use mobile internet !! :-(

[Abidaddy]

Hi all,

What a great forum!!.

This is my first post and not the most positive to start....sorry !!

I have read many post on the Virgin support site, but having just signed up to receive 3 Blackberry 8520 mobiles at £10.21 p/m each for my family (50mins, 250 text and 1GB internet), I am concerned at the number posts of high bills due to Virgin/Blackberry not distinguishing between Blackberry browser use (i.e messenger) and using the phone to browse the internet (Virgin inclusive data), resulting in charges of £2 per MB, and bills in excess of £100.

I would like some advice of possible,

1. Is it ok for my daughter to use Facebook and MSN? Does this come out of the Blackberry allowance or Virgin's bundle?
2. I will try and set max spending limits to £50 for each phone but I understand that Virgin could suspend the phone if you reach the limit.....what would happen next? Would a reconnection fee be payable?
3. The Blackberry is reported to use data allowance 'behind your back during the night' resulting in unknown usage. Is there advice to prevent/limit this?

Am I worrying too much? Are there many of you who are using this service happily?

Thanks so much for any reply :-)

Kind regards,

Mark.

[jb66]

That blackberry doesn't have 3G. It's gonna be very very very hard to go over 1gb.

[Abidaddy]

Thank you for the quick reply :-) I feel a lot better now !!!

[hannspree]

I am just coming to the end of a contract of two years with a blackberry 8520 and i can say thank-god it's the end of that,bluetooth is a joke,internet is so slow with it been GPRS,WIRELESS works sometimes,always a bad reception but you are safe to use facebook,msn,all day long,but downloading a large file you would need to leave the phone running then return 20 hours later,the 1GB of data allocated is simply a tease,you would never do that data in a month of sundays,the best speed i ever achieved was 4kb/s,mobiles have moved on so fast sadly the 8520 is a old relic now,my new Samsung galaxy2 is awesome.

[Abidaddy]

Thanks again for your reply :-)

My daughter is social networking mad at the moment and I now feel better in leaving her to her own devices.

The 8520 wouldn't have been my first choice but I got out voted by the two females in the tribe!!

Mark :-)

[Charliedontsurf]

My daughters social network mad also EG-Blackberry messenger, Facebook ect ect.She has a Blackberry bold.

As for the charges we have our mobile contracts with T-mobile and have a "blackberry services" package. Can you not pay virgin for BB-Services?

Its usually £5 a month.

You should be happy your daughter will have a 8250 for £10.21, I have to pay £40 a month my daughters bold. An today shes asked for a galaxy s2.

[Abidaddy]

Hi there and thanks for the reply,

I know Virgin provide a Blackberry allowance of 50MB/day but there has been confusion amongst users when it comes to browsing the internet using the Blackberry internet shortcut instead of using the Virgin internet portal shortcut.

In these instances users have sometimes used in excess of the Blackberry 50MB allocation and were charged £2/MB even though they may have a 1GB Virgin internet allowance.

As pointed out earlier by the previous posts the GPRS connection is sooooo slow and the data used by social networking is so small, I guess I was just worrying a little bit, but not now :-)