Tired of being charged for data usage from your main balance? Well.. Who isn’t?
By default, Vodafone India automatically puts you on the PayG data plan after your paid data plan’s quota is over. That is, if you are subscribed to a plan which gives you 1.5GB of daily data, you will be rolled on to the base tariff of 4p/10KB as soon as your daily quota expires. So, instead of being like Jio (which slows the data speed), Vodafone starts charging your data from your main balance.
The result is unwanted expenses. Since data on base tariff is priced very high (about ₹4000 per GB), your main balance can get emptied pretty fast. Ideally Vodafone should rather stop offering you a data service (if they can’t slow it down), but well, there’s a lot of money to earn from the few MBs of data you’ll consume under the base tariff.
Vodafone does have an option to disable data when an internet plan is not available. So, instead of rolling to a base tariff, Vodafone will disable the data service on your phone.
And when your data quota gets renewed, or you subscribe to a new data pack, the mobile data will start working again. Sweet. Isn’t it?
Before you think Vodafone is being nice, then that is not the case. It is all because TRAI mandates the operators to offer such an option to their subscribers.
Stop Vodafone data services without a plan
By SMS – Send “STOP” (without quotes) to 1925
By Call – Dial 1925 from your Vodafone number
You will be alerted by an SMS that the request to discontinue PayG data services is received. It will take upto 30 minutes to fully stop them.
“Hello, your internet pay go services have been deactivated. You can continue using internet while on a pack, dial *111# to buy a data pack.”
Re-activate data services
You can re-activate your pay as you go data services at any point (as needed). Here’s how:
By SMS – Send “START” to 1925
By Call – Dial 1925 and listen to the IVR
That’s all it takes to save yourself from wasting all your main balance just because you forgot that your data pack (or the quota) is about to expire.
Opinion: Every subscriber should keep PayG data services disabled, unless he/she is well aware of the costs and can control the usage.
