AT&T Threatens To Shut Off Service of Customer Who Won Throttling Case 327
suraj.sun writes in about the recent small claims case against AT&T's throttling of 'unlimited' plans. From the article: "AT&T has about 17 million smartphone customers on 'unlimited' plans, and has started slowing down service for users who hit certain traffic thresholds. Spaccarelli maintained at his February 24 small-claims hearing that AT&T broke its promise to provide 'unlimited' service, and the judge agreed. In a letter dated Friday, a law firm retained by AT&T Inc. is threatening to shut off Matthew Spaccarelli's phone service if he doesn't sit down to talk. Spaccarelli has posted online the documents he used to argue his case and encourages other AT&T customers copy his suit."
Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no love for AT&T and I'm glad the guy won, but if one of my customers sued me, I'd drop them in a heartbeat!
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have no love for AT&T and I'm glad the guy won, but if one of my customers sued me, I'd drop them in a heartbeat!
If you're not falsely-advertising your services, then you have nothing to worry about.
We run a hosting company and have been putting up with this for years. We provide underloaded servers that have packages with hard limits to prevent abuse and to ensure people get what they pay for. All these "unlimited" hosting plans have been scams from day-1 and we're glad someone is finally getting held to task for the dumbing down of the market.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
AT&T isn't really advertising falsely, the data is unlimited. The speeds are limited.
They should be ordered to clarify their advertising and say "3G speed up to 2GB" or similar.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Informative)
The data isn't unlimited, either.
Re:Duh? (Score:4, Funny)
"A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation."
-- Howard Scott
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Duh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Which means the data is effectively limited as well. If you sell "unlimited plans" and then throttle speeds to the point where downloading 24/7 for a month will only net you 1GB of data, that's not very unlimited is it?
Re:Duh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Which means the data is effectively limited as well. If you sell "unlimited plans" and then throttle speeds to the point where downloading 24/7 for a month will only net you 1GB of data, that's not very unlimited is it?
So by that bizarre logic, you're suggesting that ATT is legally obligated to ensure they can sustain 100% of theoretically possible 3G bandwidth at every possible location in their network where there is any viable signal at all?
They are obligated to provide what they advertise. If they can't provide it, they shouldn't advertise it.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as inviting customers into a buffet type purchase... well, even the unlikely scenario of having just one single person consume ALL of the restaurant's resources is the risk of advertising an all-you-can-eat buffet. The risk is hedged against the very powerful advertising draw of a "limitless" purchase. What the owner is hoping for is the overall average of food consumed/person will be profitable. At the very least, the restaurant should inform customers that after x plates of food they can only have x more plates of food per hour, and let them decide if the price is worth it. But look what just happened! Our restaurant lost the draw of the "limitless" at the expense of hemming their (larger) customers in. When selling stuff, you can't have it both ways.
This is what AT&T (and others) have been advertising their "Unlimited" plans as. "Use as much data as you want; hell, glut yourself on it!! Err.... unless you're identified as a data glutton, in which case you have to consume your unlimited data no faster than we're willing to arbitrarily provide it.". Slowing the speeds artificially after a customer consumes an arbitrary amount of data is the issue. You cannot do this and still attempt to advertise the plan as "Unlimited". Nobody's asking AT&T to provide both unlimited speeds and unlimited data; we're simply asking them to allow us to use all the data we want, at the advertised rate, or to stop marketing the plan as "Unlimited" entirely, because it's not.
Now I'm hungry, and yes, I'm blaming AT&T for that, too. Dammit.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
So by that bizarre logic, you're suggesting that ATT is legally obligated to ensure they can sustain 100% of theoretically possible 3G bandwidth at every possible location in their network where there is any viable signal at all?
I must agree. If they didn't want to fall under that bizarre logic, then they should advertise as such.
Re:Duh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Straw man. Unlimited != Full speed all the time. Unlimited means that they're not limiting it. Your basement walls limit it and that's fine. Cosmic radiation limits it, and that's fine. Your other users clog up the spectrum and that's a grey area; maybe it's fine if you're making an effort to up the transmitters in the area, and maybe it's not if you're cutting costs by taking them down.
If you're paying money for software and hardware to limit, it's no longer unlimited. That is what they're doing.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Informative)
If they actively advertise that such service is available there (infamous coverage map scandal material here), then yes.
Otherwise, it is false advertising.
They like to advertise spotty coverage areas with a black/white brush of "covered!" In the hopes that people in those areas will switch to them and become saddled with a contract. As a consumer who would be so saddled, I feel they are obligated to satisfy their promises of service to the people they dupe this way.
So, either:
1) they stop lying about effective coverage, and give a 60% theshold before declaring an area "covered" (meaning you get between 3 and 4 bars on a 5 bar indicator), or shade their coverage map with a gradient to show realworld effective coverage.
2) put up, or shut up-- and actually deliver on what their advertising drones spew.
Just because that is inconvenient or expensive for them, does not justify false advertising.
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Certainly not. Have these things called principles, and a mental disorder known as "integrity."
These immediately disqualify me from work in the legal, corporate, and political vocational fields.
You can't please everyone, but you can lie to everyone. This is how politics works. A person with integrity and ethics who proposes a vitally needed, rationally grounded, but otherwise unpopular solution to current campaign related issues will never win against an unscrupulous liar who puffs smoke up voter's asses,
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Well, if you're wanted to be extremely literal about it, you can argue that AT&T is legally obligated to sustain infinite download speed to infinite data, because nothing which is finite can be called "unlimited". But that would be silly.
Obvious, there's a judgment call, and the difference between a customer's judgment and AT&T's judgment is the heart of the controversy.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Informative)
So by that bizarre logic, you're suggesting that ATT is legally obligated to ensure they can sustain 100% of theoretically possible 3G bandwidth at every possible location in their network where there is any viable signal at all?
Beautiful example of a strawman.
The argument is that ATT (and t-mobile, for that matter) should provide what they advertise, and it is their due diligence to make sure that those things that they control work as advertised.
So - no - they can't help you if you're in your basement.
But when they intentionally damage the service they've sold you as "unlimited" - yeah, that is flat out unethical and pretty much fraud.
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AT&T isn't really advertising falsely, the data is unlimited. The speeds are limited.
They should be ordered to clarify their advertising and say "3G speed up to 2GB" or similar.
It's misleading at-best.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Funny)
"AT&T isn't really advertising falsely, the data is unlimited. The speeds are limited."
If I had an "unlimited" data plan, but after 5GB, I reduced your speed to 0, it's still unlimited, just relative to the new current rate.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is what we're talking about here...
Since they don't CLEARLY disclose that it's "unlimited data" in their advertising, it's misleading at best. This is why they lost the damn lawsuit- you can't advertise it one way and then take it basically away in the fine print- that's called bait-and-switch and it's illegal.
I honestly wish people would QUIT trying to follow the weaseling that the companies use- the law is rather explicit on this subject,
"Unlimited" means just that- that they're not limiting the use of the resource to it's fullest. "Unlimited data" isn't even accurate as they're actually limiting just how much data you can consume by throttling. So, folks, QUIT running that one up the flagpole. Doesn't match the reality of things. Doesn't match their requirements per law.
Re:Duh? (Score:4, Funny)
AT&T isn't really advertising falsely, the data is unlimited. The speeds are limited.
>
Only your bill is unlimited.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are wrong, but at the same time it's true that unlimited isn't truly unlimited. Here's how it works.
Say you're on a "true unlimited" monthly data plan, and you get a download speed of 100kbps. You're actually buying 1 month's worth of data @ 100kbps, or about 259gb. Now that number is not infinity but that's what people expect when you say unlimited - unlimited data at the advertised speed, the only limitation being time itself. If you offer a 100kbps plan that doesn't let you download 259gb per month, and call it unlimited, that's when people will feel that they've been lied to. There is not only the natural limitation of time, but also you're not delivering the advertised speed.
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I think what most people assume they're getting when they buy an "Unlimited" product is they are able to consume as much of that product as they possibly can. When you buy "Unlimited" data, or "Unlimited" texts, "Unlimited" talk minutes, or "Unlimited" (all-you-can-eat) food, or "Unlimited" water from th
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AT&T isn't really advertising falsely, the data is unlimited. The speeds are limited.
They should be ordered to clarify their advertising and say "3G speed up to 2GB" or similar.
I bought a 6' fence one time that was 33% off. Come to find out, the 33% was off the hight, not the price so I ended up paying full price for a 4' fence.
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Many restaurants can/will limit seating time to 1 hour, or maybe 90 minutes ... buffet or not.
Please tell us which restaurants those are so we can avoid them.
Amuse bouche, aperitif, cold apetizer, hot apetizer, main course, dessert, cheese, avec, wines - all in less than an hour? No thanks.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have an unlimited hosting plan from DreamHost, and it has always worked quite well for me (currently in my second or third year, I forget). It works because they pay attention to what you're doing and assign you to a server based on how you use the service, e.g. poor-performing WordPress instances live in a festering cesspool all to themselves so that their search doesn't cause half-minute delays on other sites, static-only or nearly static-only sites are on servers with other static-only sites, high-bandwidth sites get sandboxed away from low-bandwidth sites, they limit the number of sites per Apache instance, etc. To be fair, if a site uses excessive CPU, they may ask them to move to a virtual private server, so I suppose it's not quite unlimited, but at least where bandwidth and storage are concerned, it is, and that's what most people mean when they call a hosting provider "unlimited".
As always, YMMV.
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They normally are fine for static sites as the "unlimited" services are normally limited by the following:
The first two rule out dynamic sites that receive any reasonable amount of traffic. The last one is their way of controlling how much disk space you can use. Basically you have unlimited disk space, but you can only have a certain number of files before you run out of i-nodes so you can't for instance upload a million images to your unlimited web space.
Of course there a
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Right. There's always a limit.
I worked for a place that provided unlimited service. Unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth. We had some specific restrictions to what could be served. They had to use our payment system, and provide content related to that system. The majority of the users did this perfectly. In exchange for complying to our restrictions, they had "free unlimited" hosting. We never took money from the client. We took an agreed upon percentage of sales via
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Dunno the specifics here, but cell phones are a great way for companies to get a 2nd chance at changing the laws that were already settled for landlines, and that's part of what we're seeing here.
My landline company cannot legally deny me service, EVEN IF i'm suing them. But part of that is the psuedomonopoly of landlines, which doesn't apply to cell phones. But probably should. Especially if they take one penny from the government, even in the form of tax breaks.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Informative)
Your landline company couldn't drop you for no reason, and they couldn't drop you solely because you had sued them, but that doesn't mean they can't drop you for any reason. The guy who sued has admitted he's used his iPhone for tethering, in direct violation of his ToS, which gives AT&T every right to drop his account. The only reason they haven't already is they were clearly hoping to avoid this publicity. It's hard to come up with a direct analogy to a landline since there aren't many limitations on landlines, but if you were using something like a blue box on your landline to get free long distance, then your phone company would disconnect you in a heartbeat, public service or not.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Tethering is equivalent to the "3rd party handset or device" restriction that was considered so onerous back in the 60s and 70s.
Basically the phone company said "to ensure quality service, we need to prohibit unlicensed devices from being connected to the telephine network."
It was shot down at the end of the 70s, which is why you can attach answering machines, caller ID readers, and cheap chineese phones.
Tethering is the same principle: attaching an "unaproved" device (computer) to their network.
This is exactly in line with the gp's argument about 2nd chances to change the law.
The "it degrades our network!" Line didn't hold up then, it shouldn't hold up now. Last I checked, a bit originating from a computer instead of a phone was not directly deleterious to any hardware in a cellular network. You could argue that tetherers use more bandwidth, but that is an ancilliary argument. Tethering itself (what is forbidden) does not harm their cellular network in any way. Transmitting excessive data, which is not what is forbidden, is what causes QoS harm.
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Then you or someone else should sue them, make that point, and win, extending the Carterphone decision http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone [wikipedia.org] to cover this case.
Up until then, it's their equipment, and they can say how you use it (especially since you're legally agreeing to their decisions when you sign up for the service). I think it sucks too, but the end user agreed to those l
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Unlike land-line service, wireless is unregulated and receives no government subsidy (caveats apply for such things as under-served communities and low-income subsidies which don't seem to apply in this case). As such, they can pick and choose customers (again caveats - excepting issues of discrimination, for example). In this case, this is a customer who they don't want to have and that seems to be legal to drop. I know I wouldn't this guy as a customer if I were AT&T.
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"receives no government subsidy"
yes they do. Who do you think backed the loans so the can build the infrastructure? Who paid for the 911 services?
AT&T is a phone company. They get subsidies. Good luck showing the the Cell portion of the corporation in no way got an advantage from any subsidy to any other portion of the company.
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wireless is unregulated and receives no government subsidy
I'm sorry, but you're completely fucking wrong.
In this case, this is a customer who they don't want to have and that seems to be legal to drop. I know I wouldn't this guy as a customer if I were AT&T.
And it shouldn't be, because that puts a huge fucking hurdle in a consumer's ability to get justice for you fucking them over. Consumer rights should vastly trump any "right" you think you have to profit. Especially in this case.
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And it shouldn't be, because that puts a huge fucking hurdle in a consumer's ability to get justice for you fucking them over.
I don't think that's true at all. There are 3 other major postpaid cell providers in the US, plus about a dozen national pre-pay. This guy won an $8000 judgement, which would pay for about 8 years of unlimited service on Sprint. I fail to see any "huge hurdle".
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I think their primary argument will be that he was tethering (and even admitted it in court). Since tethering was clearly not allowed by the ToS and AT&T has an added service allowing tethering if he wanted to do it, they really do have a pretty good case not only for dropping him, but winning their appeal. If he is going to hold AT&T to their side of the contract, he has to hold up his side as well...
Someone who hasn't actually broken their ToS and yet has still been throttled needs to sue AT
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They get the rights to spectrum, which is supposed to be publicly owned (though, that too may have been permanently sold off to the corporations).
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I don't use AT&T, or I'd be trying to get in on the fun. I did post the article to G+ hoping that some of my friends can do the honors.
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Not a perfect analogy; most mortgage contracts lay out the foreclosure process very specifically. Choosing to stop paying your mortgage doesn't necessarily break the contract, it simply allows them to potentially foreclose on the property. Of course, every mortgage can be different so this may not apply universally.
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Can you say "two year contract"?
It works both ways.
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But if the customer is unhappy? Nope - they're bound to the contract.
Bastards.
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If they make you that mad why do you continue to do it? Get a pay as you go phone. No one forced you to sign the contract. You did it because you like the subsidized phones or something.
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I just did this - I feel like a sucker for paying T-Mobile 40 extra dollars every month for so long.
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Well, yeah. That phone wasn't actually free you know.
The major thrust of the contract is that they give you a phone in exchange for guaranteed business. Since you already have the phone, their part of that bargain is fulfilled and they can cancel the contract without penalty (as they are the ones that 'lose' in such a case). After two years, you've fulfilled your side and can cancel the contract without penalty too.
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They can say anything they want in the contract, that doesn't mean it overrides the law even if you signed the contract. If the law (a judge ruling for instance) says they can't drop him, then they can't regardless of the paper they signed says.
Its important to note though, that no one said AT&T can't drop him. It seems they can so far until someone actually shows otherwise.
I think the point here however is that if everyone does this and AT&T 'drops them' thats a half a billion dollars or so in
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Unless the consumer has the same rights, and can do so without penalty, then that clause should not be allowed.
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Well, apparently, the guy admitted to tethering, which the contract also forbids. You can argue whether it should be verbotten, or even allowed in the contract, but it is in the contract.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
and I'm glad the guy won
I for one wonder why he won; he admits to sucking down the bandwidth due to tethering which is a clear violation of the terms of service he signed up for as part of getting unlimited bandwidth. If he'd used it all watching videos and whatever else you can do with just the phone itself, I'd be completely supportive. But are all the people complaining about ATT throttling them using so much due to tethering? If so, I've suddenly lost all interest and sympathy. Here I thought all the complaints were from people using their phones' internal capabilities and getting cut off.
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It's small claims court.
Probably none of ATT's lawyers showed-up, so the judge never learned the customer was using tethering, and so he issued a judgement based on lack of knowledge. In a real court this guy would probably be torn to shreds by ATT's lawyers.
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I don't know about this particular court, but in many small claims courts, parties are not allowed to be represented by counsel (even if the attorneys are in-house counsel).
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Interesting)
That again depends on the court. Here in Oregon (where I practice), a corporation that sends and attorney to small claims court without having received prior permission from the judge will get tossed from the courtroom and the attorney could potentially be sanctioned. And judges here rarely give such permission. When my employer gets sued in small claims, we generally send a non-attorney from our risk management department.
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Care to back that statement up? Or are you just talking out of your ass because you're upset that a consumer actually won something, and was able to stand up to the big guy?
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Except you're placing an arbitrary and retarded limit on the data. There's no difference from using the data on the phone, to using it as tethering.
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I for one wonder why he won
Because the matters are unrelated.
AT&T promised something they didn't deliver. That's the case he brought and won. His tethering or not does not change the fact of AT&T failing to provide the advertised service.
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That being said, I think there are some other people who would deserve the win. All AT&T has to do is stop calling their plan unlimited, and then they can cap all they want. Just have two plans: Lite, and Standard. Ad
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Huh? I think you are confused about what free long distance means. Netflix also has unlimited online movie watching, which they don't throttle. You said, "Netflix got sued for it too, so all they had to do was disclose the fact that they might throttle." That's exactly what's supposed to happen and exactly what AT&T failed to do.
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> I have no love for AT&T and I'm glad the guy won, but if one of my customers sued me, I'd drop them in a heartbeat!
Yes, but I would assume that the 24months minimum contract period plus termination notice apply for both sides. In which case you hanged yourself with your own contract. 5/5 for style, 1/5 for thinking it through.
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"but if one of my customers sued me, I'd drop them in a heartbeat!"
And he will enjoy suing you again. It's a vicious cycle when you lie about service and whine about getting used because you lied about what you were selling.
Moral of the story? Dont be a scumbag company and you will not open yourself up for the vicious lawsuit cycle.
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Huh? What companies? I'm pretty sure you aren't one of my customers.
Does sitting down help? (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, I'll try anything to improve AT&T signal reception, but I'm skeptical. I tried sitting, standing, and even lying down, and it doesn't really seem to change anything.
Re:Does sitting down help? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Does sitting down help? (Score:5, Funny)
Have you tried bending over?
Well, that definitely made it easier to take what I was receiving from AT&T, but it didn't help with the cell phone signal one bit.
Re:Does sitting down help? (Score:5, Funny)
If I had mod points they would go to this.
Vaseline might be even more helpful...
He violated the TOU though (Score:5, Insightful)
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Does ATT sell any devices that are specifically for use with PCs? Like the link below? If so then they can't use that "no tethering" clause to escape false advertising charges ("unlimited") that future customers might bring:
http://www.virginmobileusa.com/mobile-broadband/broadband2go.html [virginmobileusa.com]
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Are you honestly so fucking dense that you don't think they'd cut him off for having the gall to call them out for being a shitty company? This is retaliation, pure and simple.
And the letters he got said that they would cut him off if he didn't come to the bargaining table, so they can shut him up, and get away with this for an even smaller pittance.
Omitted in Summary (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Omitted in Summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Two problems: 1. Terminating the contract is not going to nullify the money he was awarded for AT&T's violation of the original contract. He didn't get a judgment that forced AT&T to provide him with unlimited data, so terminating the contract only serves to release him from the obligation to pay for a capped service that he quite clearly dislikes. AT&T is presuming that he wants to remain an AT&T customer. Since TFA says that he doesn't care.. 2. Thousands of others have tethered their phones, and AT&T's response has been not to terminate their service, but to require them to buy the approved tethering package. While the language of the contract may permit termination for violation of the TOS, AT&T has likely waived termination as a remedy for this sort of violation through its own announcements and actions. If AT&T terminates the contract and attempts to impose a termination fee, expect a second small claims case where there's a reasonable likelihood that AT&T loses. "Settle with us or we'll kick you out of our lousy service and appeal (without being able to introduce new evidence or arugment)" isn't much of a threat. The internet is rife with people looking for "material changes" in their contract in order to escape without paying an ETF, and he's only risking an $850 'paper' loss of his original award.
Oops. (Score:2)
Game, set, match. I have NO love for AT&T, but if this guy admits to violating their ToS, he doesn't have much of a leg to stand on.
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Assuming, of course, that a ToS provision against tethering is enforceable in the first place, which sounds dubious to me, at least from technical perspective (bits are bits).
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Why wouldn't it be enforceable? What statute or case law would invalidate it?
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Yes and it's perfectly legal to do so. That is unless you can show me the statute(s) or case law that says otherwise.
What would victory look like? (Score:2)
What would victory look like? Forcing them to acknowledge that they're genuinely incapable of delivering what they promise is really about as much as can be achieved...
Forced arbitration (Score:2)
"We don't care what some judge said. You either do it our way, via arbitration, or we ban you forever."
Damn corporations. Sound similar to how Paypal operated in the previous decade, until a class action lawsuit was brought against them by the States. Well at least corporations don't have power to throw me in jail forever, or draft me to serve in some foreign war (like government can).
Honda owner did the same thing (Score:2)
For those that don't RTA: "Spaccarelli's victory in small-claims court is similar to that of Heather Peters, a California woman who won $9,867 from Honda last month because her Civic Hybrid did not live up to the promised gas mileage. She, too, is helping others bring similar cases."
I'm surprised she won. Perhaps it was because Honda *reprogrammed* the car after purchase, and that immediately made the MPG drop by ~10. I own a Honda Insight and am happy with the results (90mpg at 50 mph; 70mpg at 60 mph)
Here's a thought .... (Score:2)
I have no problem with a business telling a customer "you cost us too much, we don't want you as a customer anymore." At the end of his current term, drop him like a hot potato.
Let Verizon or Sprint deal with him....
Re:Here's a thought .... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Corporate Bullies (Score:5, Informative)
This is a cut-and-dry case of corporations pushing around the consumers. Given it is over internet service, this would make a great case of 'cyber-bullying' (as much as I hate that whole concept).
If American customers have any sense, they will file these suits in droves and this guy will never talk to AT&T again.
The Guy Admits He Violated the TOS (Score:3)
Since they guy admits he violated the Terms of Service by tethering, is it really a surprise?
Re:The Guy Admits He Violated the TOS (Score:5, Interesting)
No, because the judge correctly ruled that a "no tethering" rule was, in fact, a limit on the service they sold him, and therefore was not allowed if they gave him unlimited service.
This is the world we live in. (Score:3)
A company should be on their knees begging customers for business. Customers are the lifeblood for a company.
Ahh, but I suppose I'm just too old fashioned for this world...
Another story (Score:3)
Re:Disclosure. (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course the whole idea of limiting our bandwidth is fucking ridiculous to me, but that is a different discussion that I'm not going to bother with right now.
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>>>Of course the whole idea of limiting our bandwidth is fucking ridiculous to me
I don't know why? The wireless spectrum only has a limited amount of space, so a single tower can only stream a maximum amount of data in a month (deviced by thousands of customers).
It's the same as my dialup connection which is also limited (~12 gigabytes/month max) because of technical constraints. Wireless/cellular internet is not different.
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cellular internet is not different.
What is it about the term "cellular" that you don't understand?
When a cell tower starts getting saturated with connections, you build several more towers and make the cells smaller reducing the xmit/recv power requirement to reduce interference.. The "we need more bandwidth" argument is and always has been maximally Bogus. They are just to frakking cheap to upgrade/build out their infrastructure because it would cut into all that wonderful grant money from taxes we paid that they were given to do just that
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Maybe it's not a right, but it's what AT&T agreed to sell these people.
Unlimited [reference.com], def:
1. not limited; unrestricted; unconfined: unlimited trade.
2. boundless; infinite; vast: the unlimited skies.
3. without any qualification or exception; unconditional.
If it has a limit, tier, cap, or threshold, it's not unlimited. Unlimited is not newspeak for limited.
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But AT&T doesn't say Unlimited but Unlimited* :-)
*For very low value of limited
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"Unlimited Data"... I honestly and dearly wish people would QUIT running that tired old argument up the flagpole- it's flatly false. Let's run some numbers...
Presume, if you will the theoretical max AT&T is providing in their non-HSPA+/LTE areas. This is 1.7Mbit up/ 0.7Mbit down. You get billed for any data transferred. If you're mostly streaming, the upstream will be negligible. So...
In 1 second, you will pull down roughly 217 kibytes of data.
In 1 minute, you will pull down roughly 12 Mibytes
Re:Disclosure. (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh... It utterly amazes me how many people buy into things begin legit, just because a company put it in the contract- and how few understand any aspects of contract law, but will say, "it's in the contract or terms of service," and therefore claim the company's in the rights. Especially here.
Re: (Score:2)
If it's about the wording then you can bet if it was an issue of wording in their favour he would be beaten over the head and made to stick to the letter of the law.
I don't understand why a company isn't held to the same rules.
If the contract said "and the customer will pay $20 every payment interval" without specifying the interval you can bet they would argue the right to change the interval to their favour and they would be within their rights to do that. Now you could argue that would be an unfair contr
Re: (Score:2)
AT&T just needs to clearly indicate that you get X gigs of data at 4G or 3G speeds, then anything after that is subject to lower speeds.
You don't have a "right" to unlimited data, sorry. The only issue I see is AT&T hasn't been clear with how it works.
I think that unlimited needs to mean truly unlimited or face false advertising penalties from the FTC. Let's just state what the hard upper limits are and be truthful in advertising. All of the cellular telecom companies have mudied these waters enough and there is no harm by just calling it what it is. It has become a war of words between companies when in actuality they are all equally poor.
Re:Disclosure. (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is not that they were unclear, it's that they LIED about it.
I have an iPhone. I have an unlimited data plan. I expect that means whenever I try to use it, AT&T will not impose limits on how much of that data I use. Now, there are a couple ways they might limit me. They could impose a cap after which I get zero data. They don't do that. They could restrict my data rate after I reach some threshold. They DO that. I know some people don't get that it's a limit, but it is, especially if they're throttling you to 1% of your normal speed. That's a cut off in all but name.
I'm not saying AT&T needs to provide me a Gb/s or infinite bandwidth, but if they sell me an "unlimited" plan, I should be able to get whatever their network is technically capable of delivering whenever I ask for it. I can accept that it may be slow if 10,000 other people are on the same pipe. That is not AT&T limiting me. When AT&T singles me out for using too much data on an unlimited plan and artificially restricts how much more data I can use, that's a limit, plain and simple.
The part that really galls me is how aggressively they advertised these things. Come and get an iPhone, they said. Browse the web! Stream music and video! The entire intarwebz are at your fingertips! NOW they want to back away from that. No. Honor your contracts, AT&T.
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If you offer me unlimited Bar-B-Que in exchange for fifty bucks, and I pay the fifty, you have to keep serving the chow until I call it quits. If you don't want to stay up all night serving spicy sauce covered meat, then you had BETTER make it clear in your offer that I have to consume all my food before your 9:PM closing time. And - if you don't want me to be waiting for you when you return to open in the morning, you had BETTER make it clear that I can only eat what I'm capable of consuming in one sitti
Re: (Score:3)
You don't have a "right" to unlimited data, sorry
I do when that's what they were advertising, and that's what they sold me.