I payed $15 for a free app
Please pardon me for spending one more post on Apple’s new Podcasts app. I thought I had given it enough knocks in my initial critique, but today’s events are worth the telling.
I received email from AT&T this morning, warning me that I was nearing my data plan allowance. I’m currently on the cheapest, 200 MB plan, and that is usually just enough. I certainly wasn’t expecting to be anywhere near it this month since I was without service for an entire week. But there it was, sitting in my inbox. So, I went to their website and checked. I was only around the 100 MB mark. It should have occurred to me then to check my wife’s account, but she never uses anywhere near 200 MBs of data, as she is almost always on WiFi when she uses her phone for anything substantial.
This afternoon, I got a second email stating that I had exceeded my limit and would be charged $15 for an additional 200 MBs. That really surprised me, as there was no way I could have used 100 MBs of data just today, so I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to contact their customer support when I got home.
During dinner, I explained this series of events to my wife, and she told me that she had received two text messages stating the same things. I finally had the “Duh!” moment, and realized that it was her data usage that the messages were about. So, I asked her, ”Well, what have you been doing differently this month?” She didn’t know. I don’t remember which one of us brought up the Podcasts app first, but I was eventually able to figure out what had happened.
She had set all of her podcasts to download automatically, not realizing that they would download over her cellular connection. That ate up 200 MBs really quick.
So, anonymous Apple designer, if you’re reading, here’s another enhancement that ought to be made. I should be able to set podcasts to download automatically, but only when I have a WiFi connection.
