Note 4 - MASSIVE email usage for no reason

[Anonymous]

Had Iphones, Note 3 for many years, 1gm now 2gb data and NEVER gone over my limit, since i have had the Note 4 it appears to be using stupid amount of data for email and despite my data resetting on 15th i am now back to having used 2gb and most days its on WIFI anyway.

Last 2 days it shows 650+mb for email and i have recieved about 50-100 emails and sent none.

I have it set to only download the first 2k of the email as i get a lot of junk and lots i dont actually bother reading, i have always had my emails set to download every 15 mins but now changed that to 2 hours so no idea why its using so much data.

I am using IMAP on our own server and the Note 3 is fine and uses minimal data for the same account and the Iphone using the same but my partners email address on the same domain and server is also fine on 2gb.

I have Googled it and lots of people seem to have seen a similar issue.

Spoke to O2 and firstly got told that 4gb uses more data than 3g and offered to remove the 4g, well i have 4g on both the Iphone and Note 3 so as well as being rubbish (it should use no more data to connect to a server in 3g than 4g unless 4g has some kind of bad packet problem or packet loss) i tried to query the 2 people at O2 who told me this as i have been in the comms/IT business for 30 years and this is news to me, yep it uses it quicker i,e if your watchig a film it will be streaming ahead much quicker so you might download a lot more of the film you maybe never watch than you would on 3g but a 100k webpage should be 100k (give or take) on either system unless i am missing something.

Booked an O2 Guru visit for this morning got a text reminding me of my appointment, turned up only to be told the guy had called in sick first thing but nobody bothered to let the people with appointments or indeed head office know as when i called head office they tell me the only appointment they can sort out for today is at the exact same store !.

Manager of the store was LESS than helpful and tell me that i have used the data, so basically tuff its my fault, well if this is happenign to me and i have been in the IT business for some 30 years and had just baout every smart phone from the Nokia Communicator (bet half of you dont even knwo what that is lol) to the Note 4 and it can happen to me then they have a problem, he offers me an appointment in a stoe over an hour away each way which is too far or 100mb of data which i try to explain will last about 3 hours at the current rate. VERY unhelpful O2.

Call customer services who tell me i can book online and add 1gb of data, try to book online, only one availble is same store tommorow but it wont let me book as it says i already have a booking with my email address.

Try the online chat, that answers then i type my problem and it just dies with 'System Not Initalised' and wont re-connect at all.

Now on hold yet AGAIN for customer service 17 mins so far.

Firstly O2 SORT YOUR BLEEDING SYSTEMS OUT, YOUR SYSTEM IS NOT UNUSUALLY BUSY, ITS USUALLY BUSY, LOOK UP THE DEFINITION IN THE DICTIONARY. YOU NEED MORE STAFF, THE CUSTOMERS CAN SEE IT BUT OBVIOUSLY THE MANAGEMENT ARE EITHER BLIND TO IT OR STUPID.

Secondly has anyone else had the same problem

[Anonymous]

Well its stopped at 601mb so i think its definatly something to do with the built in app and my IMAP accounts
think we can rule out another rogue app sending emails, it would have gone up a few Mb by now.

[Anonymous]

Shame @viridis is not here!! Hope he comes back soon! 

Any way I would expect Samsung. To know a bit more about this... something in their software is making ur company's server just "continually " send data, or the phone just keeps "asking " for it... sorry about the technical jargon 

[MI5]

My latest "guess" is that IMAP is not marking emails "as read" on the server so it is constantly downloading the same ones over and over again.
Check the settings to see if there is something that needs ticking or unticking.....?

[Anonymous]

See, I may not be too far of...I'll just keep it coming...then @MI5 that does know about this things will keep the ideas coming and turn my strange ideas, obviously very advanced,  into real suggestions ...

[jonsie]

I don't like the native app. Try K9.

[Anonymous]

Well tried another client and seemed fine, downloaded some emails ran it for a while and used less than 1mb for emails, stopped that and tried the built in client again and now that seems to be ok ?

Checked the settings before and after, took some screen shots to make sure and nothing is different well except its now checking every 15 minutes instead of 2 hours and i have re-enabled background data so its doing more than before.

Had it running for about an hour or so and its gone from 601 to 604mb (it dows auto download attachments on WIFI so maybe a bit higher than just one mobile data).

It was not the server not marking as read as I was using Outlook on the desktop and that was marking them as read anyway and I logged in to webmail just to check they were all marked as read on the server.

Hate it when you have no real answer, i am going ot try K9 and another client and maybe just change over as most people seem to think others are better.

Now just to monitor it for a while and make sure it does not go mad.

Thanks for everyones help and suggestions again.

[MI5]

At least you're getting somewhere - It must have error'd when the account was first set up....

[jonsie]

Sounds promising. Hope its sorted now.

[Anonymous]

Thinking maybe a corruption in the internal email database on the device maybe causing it to keep reloading data ?

Been a few hours and 605mb total from 601 at start of day so thats a real improvement !

[jonsie]

4mb  sounds about right so you could be correct. Sometimes just deleting and restoring email accounts sorts it out.