AT&T Sued For Systematic iPhone Overbilling 265
Hugh Pickens writes writes "UPI reports that AT&T is facing a lawsuit that says AT&T routinely bills for 7 percent to 14 percent more data transactions than normally take place, which could blossom into a costly class-action case. Court papers claim that attorneys set up a test account for an iPhone, then closed all of its apps and left the device unused for 10 days. AT&T still billed the account for 2,292 KB of usage. 'A significant portion of the data revenues were inflated by AT&T's rigged billing system for data transactions,' say court papers filed on behalf of AT&T customer Patrick Hendricks. 'This is like the rigged gas pump charging you when you never even pulled your car into the station.' Attorneys say they would file to have the case moved to class-action status, which makes the outcome relevant to all of AT&T's iPhone accounts."
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:AT&T's Fault? (Score:5, Interesting)
So your argument is that if AT&T builds in an app that checks with AT&T for updates, and can't be disabled, AT&T should be able to bill customers for the privilege of having that update checker? Because the phone in question was running no applications whatsoever.
The obligatory car analogy: Do you think it would be ok for automakers to charge customers for the privilege of replacing recalled parts? (especially considering the Fight Club math of cost of recall >= probability of failure * units sold * average court settlement)
Same thing happened to me. (Score:3, Interesting)
I know this is about the iPhone but since I have my iPad data plan with AT&T... I had issues with my iPad. I had it turned OFF one weekend. I turned it back on and within 5 minutes I received an email saying my data plan had maxed out after 2 1/2 weeks into the plan (250MB). So I renewed the plan mid month. I wasn't sure what in the world I could have done to cause this as it'd never happened before. I only have two pages of apps, none had notifications turned on, none had 'allow location' , etc. My email was manual only when I'm in mail. I use the iPad when I'm at work to check email once or twice a day and I am sometimes on Yahoo IM. But rarely. I don't stream vids or play online games, etc. Other than that I use the iPad as an ereader and for Pages. No reason at all to cause such data usage. 2 weeks later I'm told my data is out AGAIN. I do a complete reset of the iPad and within 5 days, I received 4 consecutive emails within an hour, one said my data plan had only 20 MB left, one said 18, one said less than 10 and one said out of data. I called AT&T and they suggested I upgrade to the 2GB plan. I said that I had no new apps on the iPad, had done a complete reset, am doing nothing more than I've done with it since May, so there's NO reason for it to all of a sudden suck so much data. We checked notifications, we checked location services, email and could find nothing to cause this. We even called Apple Care. No one could find a reason. And LO! after my complaint to AT&T, I haven't had that problem again even though it's been almost 6 weeks. Even though we changed none of my settings, as they were already turned off. I find that a bit suspect. To their credit, AT&T was gracious enough to give me one month's free iPad and iPhone services 'for my troubles', which was rather decent of them as the gent on the phone heard how irate I was becoming.
Lag time (Score:4, Interesting)
If you read the actual complaint there are three claims. One of them is that data services were charged for were data not requested and that seems to be the one that everyone is focused on. Maybe there's background services, maybe not. However, a better explanation is actually that there is only one issue - the last one in the complaint. This complaint is that charges are not always applied at the same time that the usage occurs. I know that this one is true - I've witnessed it myself, was penalized for it, then AT&T forgave the penalty (more on that in a second).
This billing lag could easily explain why data charges were incurred during a period of time when the phone was supposedly inactive.
My daughter recently got an iPhone with the 200MB plan. We were monitoring her data usage regularly and towards the end of the billing cycle we saw that she would go over if she continued with the same consumption. So she stopped using the data apps... she went over anyway and we were billed for $30 instead of the $15 we had budgeted for. After my daughter swore that she had not used the web in the last week, I called AT&T to find out what the deal was. I was finally able to confirm with a tech that indeed, some data activity might not be billed for days after the usage. He told me that he could confirm that my daughter had actually exceeded her limit a day or so before she ceased activity. AT&T was kind enough to drop the extra $15 since their tool had misguided us. I checked and as far as I can tell, AT&T makes no claims as to whether billing for services rendered occurs at the time of rendering.
Re:AT&T's Fault? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:AT&T's Fault? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nothing in the article shows how it couldn't have been the phone itself doing it, not AT&T doing it.
I'm guessing you haven't done much business with AT&T? Because this is AT&T that we're talking about. Making up random crap to put on the invoice and then sending you to collections seems to me to be what they're all about!
My daughter was a foreign exchange student in Germany. I signed up for an international calling plan ($5/month, $0.10/min) before calling her. AT&T was nice enough to charge me the $5/month, and then $4.00 per minute, making my $90 bill closer to $4,000.000. (Yes, that's right!) I spent HOURS on the phone with their support reps, with names like "Mike" and "Sally" with barely comprehensible Indian accents and horrid call quality, none of whom seemed able to do anything at all to correct the bill.
After 4 months of angry-looking bills and threats to send to collections, I called AT&T and threatened to quit their service. Guess what? I ended up talking to somebody named "Sally" with an AMERICAN accent who corrected the $4,000 bill in 10 minutes! Thinking balance had been restored to the Universe, I decided to leave it be.
The next month, they overcharged me $20. If you've read this far, you're probably thinking: "Oh, this guy just had a bad experience... this isn't usual"..
There's more!
A few months after all this, my son wanted an iPhone and wanted me to co-sign. So I showed up at the AT&T store to find out that their "co-sign" is better read as "it's my contract". Smarting from the previous experience, I refused to sign, and left the store.
A year later, they sent me to collections for $150 for breach of contract. AT&T sent me to collections for a contract I never even signed. It took another two hours and 6 call transfers to clear this up.
Do you think I *ever* want to do business with AT&T?