Is AT&T Overcharging and Overbilling?
It seems that someone has decided to file a pretty little lawsuit against AT&T. It’s being said that AT&T is overstating the data usage and overbilling the iPhone and iPad data charges! AT&T’s billing is being compared to going in to a rigged gas pump, you’ll only pump 9/10 of a gallon but you’ll be charged for a full gallon.
“In the new complaint, 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 50KB website, AT&T’s bill would typically overstated the traffic as 53.5KB (a 7 percent overcharge0 to as high as 150KB (a 300 percent overcharge).”
Not only that, but the consulting firm also discovered that AT&T even bills for phantom data traffic, that is to say, data that was never used. The consulting firm set up a test account, closed every app, disabled push notifications and location services. The didn’t have an email accounts configured and they didn’t touch the iPhone for 10 days, but somehow AT&T still billed them for using 2,292KB of data usage.
“This is like the rigged gas pump charging you when you never even pulled your car into the station.”
There may be a lot of AT&T users that this will never affect but there are also those who just barely exceed the limitations of the data cap who now have to pay double the usual amount for data that month!
What do you think about this lawsuit? Do you suspect AT&T overstated or overbilled you? Let us know in your comments, I look forward to reading them!
I feel like this is happening to me, and I don’t know what I can do about it. They are saying I go over every single month, but there is no way Thad happening. If they can’t offer unlimited like Verizon, I can get my iPhone fix with Verizon.
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Hahaha! They’ve been doing that even before smartphones came out! Remember AOL, YM chatting? AT&T charged me when I reply to a chat using my desktop (while logged in YM in my phone @ the same time)! I asked, why charge & can u prove that the replies came from the phone. Upto now I have not paid AT&T coz they still cannot prove it! I will never go back to them. I have been a loyal TMobile eversince using iPhone 4 w/o data (wifi only).
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Yes, I have a complaint about a related issue. I purchased the 14.99 plan, and thought my dad would could keep his usage to under 250mb. Couldn’t do it. He didn’t go over the 250mb, but would have if we didn’t bump up his plan. So, we changed his plan to the 24.99 during the same month. That’s a total so far of 14.99, plus 24.99. Apparently, no way to challenge this, as there is NO CONTACT INFORMATION FOR AT&T LISTED ON THEIR EMAIL COMMUNICATIONS FOR IPAD ACCOUNTS! So, I ask all of you…how could this possibly be legal? Is there no way then to contact them to pro-rate the month’s billing? WTF! Please contact me to let me know, because this seems to be downright nefarious on AT&T’s part.
Sincerely,
One Pissed-Off AT&T customer.
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