Sync Over Cellular was disabled - Spotify iOS still synced over cellular - now charged 600 Euro

[sindreg]

Hi, the title says it all really.

I renewed my Spotify Premium subscription at a party, and the next day I discovered that it had synced 2GB+ via 4G. I immediately checked my settings, and Music Quality > Sync Over Cellular was indeed disabled (i have always turned it off and I had no reason to ever turn it on). And yes I am not talking about separate settings on separate devices - this was all on my iPhone.

Those Gigabytes, sadly, means I have now been charged 600 euro.

A few things:

1)  Why did Spotify sync when Sync Over Cellular was disabled? Sounds impossible right?

2) Do you have a limit on how long each "session" lasts when you sync over mobile? Since mobile companies allegedly can't register how much data is used per session until the session is finished, it would make sense for spotify to update in smaller batches to prevent long data-intensive sessions and give phone companies the opportunity to block further updates if you have a data limit.

3) To whom at Spotify do I send the phone bill, since this was clearly caused by your software being faulty?

[LordRollin]

From what I've found it seems that this is something that has happened to others before, but I haven't been able to find an explenation as to why it happened. At this point I would contact support to report the issue. I don't know if they'll cover the bill, but at least they might be able to prevent this from happening to anyone else.

[sindreg]

Oh I'm sure they won't cover the bill. How could I prove that the setting was turned off?

Unless...settings are stored on their servers...and they have a log that proves my case.

But why would they do that, right? I've had to cancel the subscription to prevent this from happening again.

Anyway, the link to that support form was literally impossible to find after looking for 5 minutes. That's why I decided to post this here. Don't Spotify read this forum?

[LordRollin]

I'm sure they'll do their best to help you, at least as much as they can do.

And they do use these forums, pretty regularly, actually, but that doesn't mean they see everything, and there's so many more of us that aren't staff floating around, that you're just more likely to hear from one of us first anyways.

[Teresa]

Hello, @sindreg.

I'm sorry to hear about this. Our Payments team will investigate the issue, could you please fill in this contact form and let me know the case number?

Thanks,

Teresa.

[sindreg]

Hi, thanks for replying and for showing sympathy 🙂 My phone company had none to offer

I did what you asked, and the case number is #02987005

Give it to me straight Doc, is there any hope of being compensated?

[Teresa]

Thanks for sending the case number, I'll make sure someone reach out to you shortly and study your case!

Regards,

Teresa.

[ZeePrioncoatl]

I too experience this issue on a daily basis. While staying in Greenland, I only have access to credit based plans, so I naturally disabled cellular use for many apps, including Spotify, but I keep waking up to "Spotify has added 11 tracks to Kick-Ass Metal" and so on. I did not believe my own eyes. I double checked, it is indeed disabled, but it still have free internet access on my cellular connection. It streams new music and loads images.

[ReyBarr]

Yes! My cellular data is being used up. I have the cellular switch in the off setting in iOS settings. In Spotify streaming quality settings, I have "download using cellular" in the off setting.

Now after being notified of my data plan being used up, I find another option in Spotify app settings "Playback" that there is another switch for offline mode.

This is confusing! There is only one switch that should prevent this and that is the iOS settings .

The simplest thing has me wanting to cancel my subscription.😡

[sindreg]

This incident made me unsubscribe from Spotify and move on to local MP3s.

I've considered going back a few times, but I just don't want to risk going through that ordeal again. Interesting to read that it's happened to other people. On top of the incredibly bugged (and bloated) Spotify desktop app I see no reason to trust them to have fixed it.