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."
AT&T's Fault? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:AT&T's Fault? (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. It would be interesting to know if they ran the same test with the data service actually turned off on the phone. Then I'd start to see fault with the carrier.
Accident or intentional? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Accident or intentional? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've also noticed many phones make it rather easy to accidentally dial numbers.
Oh yeah they totally do this on purpose
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Oh yeah they totally do this on purpose
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic, but some of them certainly do; many promotional phones (a.k.a. 'gifts' from some stores) that run a customized version of the OS have some dedicated 'connect' buttons, that are very easy to push, and use dial-up to connect to the net without warning, and with outrageous pricing- even more so if they happen to be pushed while abroad, where roaming surcharges apply.
After the lobbying for effectively banning access to streaming services (as if the providers have always
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On the other hand, ATT could claim they are not responsible for Phones sending data, and the user should have checked into that prior to signing-up. Just like the old Dialup ISPs said they are not responsible for long-distance charges incurred.
Reminds me of this story - Verizon Can't Do Math - The operator quoted "point zero zero two cents per kilobyte" * 35,500 KB == 71 cents
Verizon charged 71 dollars.
http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars-from-cents.html [blogspot.com]
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As of august of last year, they were still doing that. I saw it personally.
http://www.rogue-development.com/blog2/2010/08/still-time-to-teach-your-reps-math-verizon/ [rogue-development.com]
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I never assumed malice on the phone rep's part.
I tried to explain to her that point zero zero two cents is not what was written. But she just couldn't wrap her head around it.
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Extra data, no. Extra charges, yes. I've mentioned elsewhere that I've only come close to the 200MB limit once in 6-7 months of use. I got text messages three times before I hit either 90 or 95% of my usage, notifying me that I was getting close to my limit.
In practice, unless you happen to be in an area with per-MB metered charges(perhaps roaming?), this will affect the very small number of people who are right at their limit each month (190MB+/200 or 1990MB/2000), which if probably a pretty small number.
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I have the old unlimited plan and i routinely get more than 350mb a month. just visiting slashdot, ars, and two other tech news sites. no youtube, and very rarely an app download.
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I've never had a problem accidentally dialing numbers. I haven't had it happen once despite having a variety of phones, clamshell, candybar and sliders.
What I have noticed, however, is that "dumb" phones, at least on AT&T tend to have the media/internet button in an overly prominent position. It's trivial to hit it accidentally and end up on the web. And since data isn't cheap for those phones I can imagine it adding up. So what I've done is go into the settings so that it can't connect to the web.
As fo
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You should see landlines - they don't even require an "OK" or "call" button. Total scam.
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This is hard to know. A better test would have been to turn the phone off by pulling the battery. I'm not sure how you do that with the iPhone, but there must be a way.
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Drain the battery dead.
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Void your warranty with a soldering iron.
Re:AT&T's Fault? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Might depend on how data's billed. Some providers round up to the nearest whatever, and if that whatever is 10kb I could see the occasional 1kb push service handshake message, or something, causing a lot of data usage.
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The article indeed doesn't give much information ... my N900 only racks up about 25kb-100kb a day at max if I turn off mail-checking ... As such I can't help but feel the 3MB of data for 10 days is indeed inflated.
People like you are the problem with western society today.
You purport strong conclusions based on nothing but your incidental personal anecdotes and "feelings". Assuming your example is even correct at all, you state that your phone uses up to 100 KB/day without mail checking enabled. That is approximately 1 MB over a 10 day period, or about half of what the lawsuit claims the AT&T iPhone used.
Any number of things could account for the iPhone using twice as much data for similar operations. Perhaps App
Re:AT&T's Fault? (Score:5, Insightful)
People like you are the problem with western society today.
You purport strong conclusions based on nothing but your incidental personal anecdotes and "feelings".
How do you not see the irony there?
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Your name wouldn't be Randall Stephenson, would it?
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Maybe BS as to who the lawsuit is targeting? Nobody in the article seems to suggest that Apple may be at fault here. The testing method is certainly weak, and if the phone is actually causing the issue, it wouldn't be AT&T's responsibility to warn the user, it would be Apple's.
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Here's an idea: the phone vendor discloses the amount of "background" data the phone will send, and the charge that will be applied to that "background" data. That way, if the background charges are disclosed, I can make an intelligent choice based on the disclosures.
All this reminds me of the situation with shrinkwrap licenses, especiall
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You're right. Everything on the phone is an app including the phone (which *shouldn't* use data).
Phone, contacts, the "killswitch", GPS if you allow cell tower helpers, etc..
Had the testers actually turned off data services rather than shut down some apps, we'd have a better picture of what was really going on. As simple a test as that would be, I'm led to believe they chose a different route on purpose.
Spot on with your WP7 comparison too.
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and it's idiot's like you that give idiots a bad rep. First off, TFA indicates that it's an overage charge by AT&T. In other words, their billing practices are to over charge you for even having the damn thing and as they stated in the summary, it's like going to the store and buying a 2 litre bottle of Cola only to discover that the bottle had 1.8 litre in it.
What the real point these lawyers are looking at is making this a class action lawsuit so they can cash in on the problem instead of the customer
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A wise man once said "assume ignorance not malice".
The only point where I would disagree with anything you said is that we are talking AT&T here. Assuming malice when dealing with AT&T (which is no longer the AT&T of old, but was taken over by the onetime Baby Bell SBC, arguably the worst of lot) is actually a good defensive strategy. Those boys rarely do anything by accident, and shafting customers is a fundamental tenet of their business model.
However, given the amount of random traffic that appears anywhere on the Internet a megabyte eithe
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WTF?
I understand what you're talking about but I have no idea why you choose to go off on this poor guy. He stated his opinion, made it clear it was only his opinion and backed it up with some the reasoning behind his statement. He in no way claimed to be absolutely right; in fact, he even pointed out a reason why he might be wrong. Perhaps he was a bit foolish to assume similarities between iPhone and N900 but one is free to draw that conclusion thanks to the information he provided.
In short, he offered
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But if the speed limit isn't posted you can employ an 'improper posting' defense. You also have a defense if the new car you just bought had a faulty odometer that wasn't properly calibrated.
To bring the analogy back on topic, the claim is that the iPhone on AT&T's network uses data in ways that aren't clear to the customer and the customer has no ability to identify/terminate the usage. Seems to me that this is a legitimate cause for concern when they are billed for data usage that they legitimately
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That's not necessarily true. In Texas if there's no posted speed limit, then the speed limit is 30MPH.
Ignorance of the law...
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I don't understand why any phone should be sending data (and wasting customers' money).
It shouldn't be wasting customer's money; the iPhone was designed to be used only with unlimited data plans (precisely so that Apple could have it do all kinds of "user-friendly" junk in the background without the customer paying for it), and for years after it was introduced you were required to have such a plan with it. AT&T moved that rug out from under it a year ago or so.
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Were the phone and the service sold as separate deals? I think that might be an important point.
Many places in the world iPhones are only sold as a bundled device with a service plan from a specific provider and the phone and service can be seen as 'one product'.
I do not know if that is the case here, but in such a case it does not seem fair that the customer is charged for traffic he did not initiate. The provider who sold him the phone + service plan should be responsible for the behavior of the product a
Re:AT&T's Fault? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not that people need proof or anything to sue these days, but...
I would then take a second group of all the above phones, and a few times a day, send them a phone call (unanswered) and a text message (unread).
(For the sake of cost efficiency, you could use just one phone in all the above states, it'd just take longer)
Ideally, the phones that are off or dead should have no consumption, those that are on or have services running should have more. There's a non-zero chance the off-but-not-dead are in a "vampire" state, and will still draw a trickle of data.
More "newsyle" fuckup (Score:4, Informative)
.commentBody ul,
{
list-style: circle !important;
margin-left:25px !important;
}
.commentBody ol,
{
list-style: decimal !important;
margin-left:25px !important;
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Re:More "newsyle" fuckup (Score:4, Informative)
Uh.. the OL seems to be working for me. I'm using FF 3.6
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Same configuration here... same result as you.
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I'm not clear what your beef is?
The OL seems to be rendering acceptably, even in my antiquated IE7 (except for a minor indent issue, which is hardly worth ranting about...).
If you're going to say something is bad, you should at least say why it's bad....
Re:AT&T's Fault? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the provider's point of view it is pretty easy to determine if a phone was actually on or not, so if you're going to overbill it's probably wise to overbill phones that were actually turned on...
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Not that people need proof or anything to sue these days, but...
I would then take a second group of all the above phones, and a few times a day, send them a phone call (unanswered) and a text message (unread).
(For the sake of cost efficiency, you could use just one phone in all the above states, it'd just take longer)
Ideally, the phones that are off or dead should have no consumption, those that are on or have services running should have more. There's a non-zero chance the off-but-not-dead are in a "vampire" state, and will still draw a trickle of data.
That's a good scientific study. But these are lawyers, at least they have something. For lawyers that's good.
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They also missed the obvious test: Two or more *identical* phones with everything tuned off except the basic interface, each on a different network. They way, data sent by the phone even when everything is turned off will be revealed, as will inflation if it happens.
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Indent and spacing are off in Opera 11. Still readable.
More of an issue is the fact that I can't log in from the homepage - I have to go into an article, and even then, half the login modal is off-screen.
You would think that a "news for nerds" site would hire better nerds, that actually test in popular browsers other than IE.
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This actually sounds to be small enough to be caused by a number of potential software issues with the phone itself.
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The consulting firm said it received data charges from 35 data transactions over 10 days, totaling about 2.3 MB.
The only question left is "Did those transactions actually occur?"
If there were indeed 35 data transactions totaling 2.3mb, then this lawsuit is a joke. If some of those transactions didn't happen, then the lawsuit is justified.
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)
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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.
Only if the customer was informed that the phone contained such a "feature". A full disclosure of the device's data usage and appropriate billing for that usage ought to be required. Unfortunately in my experience the carrier will tell you generally that the device will use some data to check for updates, but nobody can actually tell you how much data, when it's used, what it's used for, or how to disable it.
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That's why it costs $60/mo just to have service (Score:2)
Your basic phone fee should be covering the health and status traffic to your handset. That basic fee covers their fixed infrastructure and handset traffic costs. The advertising for metered data, and the consumer expectation, is that the 200MB (or 2GB) allotment is discretionary, whereas it appears that there may very well be a 5% or greater "overhead" you're getting charged for.
I've come close to my 200MB limit once, when I was on vacation and the hotel wifi was not free. I looked up all the "stuff" the
Excellent! New Business Model. (Score:2)
Carrier sells phone to customer.
Phone has s**twad of carrier apps that do 'update checking, etc...' to generate automatic traffic.
Profit! Profit! Profit!
As a quasi-ludite I have no cell phone, do you mean to tell me that automatic backround data transmissions and their potential impact on the bill are not stated up front in the contract?
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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?
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No, the problem was Yahoo! Mail. Read article here: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/01/windows-phone-7-phantom-data-leaker-unmasked-as-yahoo-mail-fi/
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It seems nobody has bothered to talk to Apple as to whether or not this is their problem.
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This is also an issue with the phone using data without the person knowing about it or maybe it's AT&T fabricating data usage. It's hard to tell based on the scant details.
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> If they would of have
Would HAVE. HAVE.
Please, think logically about your language before distorting it through laziness.
maybe it's like cable arp packets and some cable s (Score:2)
maybe it's like cable arp packets and some cable systems count as part of your cap.
NNTP rocks (Score:2)
Ah, yes, nntp [wikipedia.org], one of the greats.
Of course, if you've set up your phone to be an NNTP server, you're pretty much asking for it in terms of bandwidth consumption.
Also, I think phones get their TOD from the cellular network, don't they?
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They'll probably settle out of court.
Offer to give customers refunds.
And I'll get a $50 check like I did with the Paypal and CD Companies lawsuits.
Refunds or coupons? I would imagine the settlement would be "$10 off your next iPhone"
If you read the Summary (Score:2)
you have RTFA
AT&T's Response (Score:4, Informative)
you have RTFA
Well, via Apple Insider [appleinsider.com] I found a more complete detailed account with AT&T's response [macnn.com]:
"Transparent and accurate billing is a top priority for AT&T," an AT&T representative has responded, speaking with MacNN. "In fact, we've created tools that let our customers check their voice and data usage at any time during their billing cycle to help eliminate bill surprises. We have only recently learned of the complaint, but I can tell you that we intend to defend ourselves vigorously."
It is odd that it seems to only be reported by iPhone and iPad users [minyanville.com].
Was the real data transfer amount zero, then? (Score:2)
Assisted GPS ? (Score:3)
BTW I assume that they had turned off e-mail checking, of course.
Can't wait to see the settlement (Score:2)
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Re:Can't wait to see the settlement (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn straight we complain. Class actions are a scam. The parties harmed by the action get a pittance while the lawyers get a metric ton of cash. You might look at it not as outrage that lawyers get paid for their work, but outrage that this action is being taken on behalf of us poor iPhone owners. It's being taken by lawyers for lawyers.
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B.S. (Score:2, Funny)
I'm calling B.S. I had an AT&T iphone, and even with full bars and every internet app open it takes WAAAAY longer than 10 days to download 2,292 KB on their network.
-Inigo Carmine
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What are you calling b.s. to? If at&t charged for 2,292 KB and according to you that can't be done even with all apps open, then att is an even bigger liar and thief.
In Other Headlines (Score:2)
More info and PDF (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Where was this test performed? (Score:2)
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Oh, no, it was held. By an intern. For 10 days straight. At $250/hr. Along with the secretary at $150/hr and a junior partner at $350/hr to verify the test. All told, that's $180,000 in billable time right off the bat.
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Lawyers upset by over-billing? (Score:5, Funny)
Wait a minute, lawyers are upset about systematic over-billing?
I'd say this is a "the pot calling the kettle black" moment, but it's more like "tar calling granite black."
I have no doubt that the lawyers will bill AT&T for every minute of those 10 days they "monitored" that iPhone...
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...but it's more like "tar calling granite black."
What is the color of granite? [answers.com]
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*whoosh*
Class Action (Score:2)
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.
It's always the same formula: Big company+lawyers+class action= law firm gets rich on billable hours and I get shit. Sure AT&T gets hurt which is a good thing but seriously there needs to be some sort of legislation on exactly how much law firms can charge when there is a class action suit. Then again I may not be affected as I'm grandfathered into an unlimited data plan. Oh well... Fuck AT&T.
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No, AT&T "getting hurt" is not a good thing. People will just pay in the form of higher costs. All of our goods and services have liability costs baked into the pricing. We lose much more than the tiny amounts claimed lost by the "victims".
Mail Fraud? (Score:2)
The complaint reads like I wrote it. (Score:2)
And that's not a compliment to the plaintiff.
The plaintiff makes essentially 4 claims for relief. They read like a tabloid expose, not what I'm used to from lawyers, stating fact and claims. "Rigged gas pump"? Number 3 in particular is a hoot:
"2. It gets worse. Not only does AT&T systematically overbill..."
Sorry, it gets 'worse'? Asking the court to consider any of your claims lesser than others doesn't seem like a recommended strategy. Making one claim 'worse' risks finding the others 'le
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.
Why isn't data use on SmartPhones instrumented: (Score:2)
It is too bad that there isn't a set of counters to provide information about data usage on each smart phone. Something one could use to form a basis for decisions about how to manage one's data over the network. Something simple that would collect information about network usage for management purposes.
Maybe someday smartphone vendors will provide such a tool. They could call the set of counters something like a Management Information Base, and they could name the protocol used to access these counter
Despite the poor methodology & sue-happy (Score:2)
...nature of the filing, does anyone have complete confidence that any automated billing system is 100% accurate or that the system is designed so that when errors occur, they are always in the favor of the customer?
In a past life, I was responsible for a our Qwest billing (formerly Northwestern Bell). Our customer service record was like a stack of paper 40-50 sheets thick, and we weren't really that big of a company.
This leads me to believe that these systems, especially at older companies, are deeply co
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Turn D2 on, then off, then on again. Only way I got it to work... D2 off doesn't work at all any more.
To be fair, D2 has been improved massively.
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If they really want to prove this they'll need to operate some kind of traffic meter on the iPhone itself, and compare that to what is reported by the carrier - but I suspect you'd have to jailbreak the phone to make that work.
If an average non-technical user turns off everything they can find (update checking, email checking, etc) and doesn't use the phone and still gets billed for a few meg of data transfer then there's something wrong. If AT&T isn't inflating data transfers, as alleged in the lawsuit, then they should be required to inform customers that their phone does stuff "behind the scenes" and you will be billed for it, even if you aren't using the phone.
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And $18,000,000 in 40-hour-billiable-days for the lawyers!
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you know.. you just gave me an idea - you could have some fun racking up peoples bills by by sending traffic to their devices for no good reason.. you don't exactly have to dos them just start flooding the network
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$30/mo for 5GB data and $0.25/mb after with a $200 cap, or $3/day (~$90/mo) for all you can eat data.
By way of comparison, my T-Mobile plan gives me 5 Gb for $25/month, with no charge for going over (that's on HSUPA). After that first 5 Gb, they throttle the connection somewhat (back around 3G speeds) but I never have to worry about any overage charges, or suddenly not having a data connection. They have other plans, I understand, but that's the one that works best for me. I also get free voice and data roaming in the U.S., so I really couldn't care less about pretty colored floating maps. I track my usage