San Francisco, CA: AT&T Mobility is facing a class action lawsuit over allegations charges associated with iPhone and iPad accounts. The suit claims that "AT&T's bills systematically overstate the amount of data used on each data transaction involving an iPhone or iPad account." The suit also alleges that AT&T bills customers or data transactions even when customers have disabled their phones.
The named plaintiff Patrick Hendricks claims that AT&T's overbilling "was discovered by an independent consulting firm retained by plaintiff's counsel, which conducted a two-month study of AT&T's billion practices for data usage, and found that AT&T systematically overstate web server traffic by 7 percent to 14 percent, and in some instances by over 300 percent. So, for example, if an iPhone user downloads a 50 KB website, AT&T's bill would typically overstated the traffic as 53.5 KB (a 7 percent overcharge) to as high as 150 KB (a 300 percent overcharge)," the complaint states.
Hendrick further alleges that "Not only does AT&T systematically overbill for every data transaction, it also bills for phantom data traffic when there is no actual data usage initiated by the customer. This was discovered by the same independent consulting firm, which purchased an iPhone from an AT&T store, immediately disabled all push notifications and location services, confirmed that no email account was configured on the phone, closed all applications, and let the phone sit untouched for 10 days. During this 10-day period, AT&T billed the test account for 35 data transactions totaling 2,292 KB of usage. This is like the rigged gas pump charging you when you never even pulled your car into the station."
The class claims that though AT&T's overcharges "have a modest effect on an individual customer's bill, they have a huge effect on AT&T's bottom line. AT&T has 92,8 million customers. In the fourth quarter of 2010, AT&T reported its wireless data revenues increased $1.1 billion, or 27.4 percent, from the year-earlier quarter, to $4.9 billion. A significant portion of those data revenues were inflated by AT&T's rigged billing system for data transactions."
Hendricks is seeking restitution and class damages for money had and received, breach of contract, unjust enrichment, unfair and fraudulent business practices, unfair competition, and violations of the federal Communications Act.
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Last updated on May-4-11 |
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