I talked my other half into me getting a "smartphone" a few months ago, he was nervous about the horror stories of massive bills etc. I had downloaded 3G watchdog and was tracking my usage daily, connecting to WIFI when at home. Well on Wednesday night, I had to switch off WIFI (it conflicts with my non-WIFI PC, thats a different issue) and forgot to turn it back on when I went to bed. Not to worry one might think, I wasn't doing anything on the phone so shouldn't use much data.

I wake in the morning to find the phone has used >1GB of data overnight, I have no idea doing what. I could not see any large files, wasn't dowloading anything, nor looking at you tube etc. I had been browsing facebook, a few web pages incl Flickr and possibly Ausphotography, but even so 1GB is massive.

Virgin have to worst excess data charges of all........my bill stands at $2253 I received an SMS from them while I was in shock at the phone to tell me my account was suspended as I had reached my credit limit. Phonecalls to Virgin so far haven't got me anywhere, I have got the query passed to Customer Services in Sydney who are due to call me back within 72H. It is so stressful waiting, I feel quite sick. Added to this my partner is FURIOUS as he warned me, and turns out there is a check button on the 3G app that had it been turned on, would have stopped data when I reached my limit. I feel such an idiot.

Anyway, will update as I hear from Virgin, but just wanted to put the warning out there that THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU. Please check your settings and make sure you have something that will kill all running apps on your phone should data limits be reached.

If I dont receive a positive outcome from Virgin (I'm not confident) I will raise a complaint with the TIO.

Has anyone had a similar experience?