Why am I being billed celular long distance charges for Whatsapp calls

[mac7]

Hi,

 I just got a massive long distance bill for calls made to a specific country on Whatsapp. This only happens on calls to that country. I make multiple calls to another country all day long , but these obviously go through as data. Fido says that I use this Whatsapp at my risk, however they also told me that they have specific conracts with all countries that track whether the calls are made from mobile phones or static phones, and the calls are billed accordingly. So they are happy to bill me the data charges on Whatsapp, but when a data charge gets billed as a cell charge, its not their problem. Hmmm. Any thoughts. If you research this on the web, its everywhere. Any other Fido folks had this Problem?

Thanks.

mac7

*** edited to add Labels***

[Nictalks]

This just happened to me and I'm so angry.

[Cawtau · Accepted solution]

Hello Nictalks,

  Welcome to the community!

  Sorry to hear you've incurred long-distance charges for a WhatsApp call. Unfortunately, the issue appears to result from a not widely known operation of the app (see here).

  As mentioned in that post, one suggestion would be to enable Airplane or Flight mode and manually enabling Wifi prior to making the call(s). Doing so should prevent the app from switching to mobile services if the Wifi internet connection is not sufficient. However, it also means that you wouldn't be able to make WhatsApp calls using a mobile data connection.

Hope this helps 😀

Cheers

[Bharati1]

Then why are we even paying for mobile data????

[Bharati1]

This is not at all fair to be charger for calls made through what's app.

I have been in canada since 2 years and I haven't paid a penny for using mobile data to make calls on what's app.

This is really frustrating. I am being charged a massive amount which I can't even afford. This is not fair. There was not even a heads up given.

I want to take legal action against it.

[FidoFaiza]

Hi @Bharati1 

We don’t have access to calls made on third-party apps like WhatsApp. If you see these calls on your Fido bill, it means they were made using Fido’s network.

Please get in touch with us here if you have any billing concerns. 

[Cawtau]

Hello Mac7,

  Welcome to the community!

  Since it's only happening for calls to a specific country, have you verified whether Whatsapp calling is available in that country (see here)? If it isn't available in that country, the app might simply direct the call to use the cellular networks. This Quora query might provide information as to which countries are affected.

Hope this helps

Cheers

[FidoNick]

Hey @mac7!

Did any of the above posts help out? Is it possible as was mentioned that the country you called is not supported by WhatsApp calling?

Let us know!

[afterthefact]

Hi @mac7 I did a quick google search for "charged long distance for whatsapp" and I found a bunch of posts from customers with AT&T, Verizon, and other carriers saying a similar story of "it used to work over data and now randomly I am being charged LD but only when I call country XYZ and not country ABC." 

So based on that research I am going to assume the issue is with Whatsapp and not Fido specifically.  If the Whatsapp code is doing strange things and invoking the incorrect dialer (cellular vs data) then you could experience what you are describing but fido certainly cannot charge LD for using data.  

Suggest you reach out to Whatsapp support to get an investigation going on their side.   Best of luck!

[FidoKenny]

Hey @mac7 and welcome to the Community.

Whatsapp is an app that uses data. Any usage done through this app will only show up as data on your bill.

For those long distance charges you mentioned, did they show up on your Fido bill?

Thank you for confirming