Back in January we noted that AT&T was facing a new class action lawsuit accusing the carrier of over-charging both iPad and iPhone customers for data. According to the lawsuit, AT&T not only artificially inflates actual data usage estimates anywhere from between 7 and 300%, but the company bills for data when the phone or tablet is disabled or unused. The case's lawyer Barry Davis appears to be making the media rounds. He talked to The Today Show about the case, noting that this over-billing occurs for all users, and that these errors never wind up in the customers' favor. AT&T insists the case is "without merit" and blames the extra charges on background applications. The case is of particular note given AT&T's new DSL caps and dubious meters, and their effort to eliminate the consumer right to participate in class actions just like this one using contract fine print.
If the are to charge by the byte, then they should have to have similar protections for customers as gas pumps are, this the best analogy I have heard in a class action case
Bet the company's will have second thoughts about metered billing when they are required that their meters be certified every 6 months as gas pumps are!
If the are to charge by the byte, then they should have to have similar protections for customers as gas pumps are, this the best analogy I have heard in a class action case
Bet the company's will have second thoughts about metered billing when they are required that their meters be certified every 6 months as gas pumps are!
Oh, you leftist Socialist pinko. We don't need government to regulate anything. The Benevolence and Honesty of unbridled, un regulated capitalism assures everyone that corporations will always do the right thing for their customers!
I don't know WHY we need these do nothing government employees who are becoming INSTANT MILLIONAIRES while the HONEST, HARD WORKING business people toil to pay their salaries.
This reminds me of the ghost data fee Verizon was charging people who had data turned off on their phone. Of course AT&T is scamming people.
The reason the pumps at your local filling station need to be checked on a regular basis is greed. Pure and simple. If an impartial entity wasn't minding the goods, most likely the station owner would be ripping people off. In HS, worked for at least 3 different gas station guys who grumbled about this all the time. They DREAMED of being able to screw with the pumps. All of them saw the weights & measures people as the enemy.
Corporate America is beyond reproach when it comes to their honesty. Just ask the folks at Lehman Bro, Enron, WorldCom, & AIG...
Shit, even my 83 yr old grandmother knew to watch the butcher's thumb when he weighed your meat on the scale. They're all looking to scam a buck....
This type of behavior is what I've been preaching against regarding UBB forever.
This particular large corporation is just doing whatever it wants with regard to truth and accuracy, imho. I hope the lawsuit goes forward and we find out the truth either way.
It shows the need for accurate collection of usage. Also it points out my complaint that the user does not always control what data is pushed to them.
I do NOT want to pay for SPAM EVERY. I do not want to be charged for updates or background tasks in general; Updates should not be automatically pushed to me until I decide, not when they decide. This is enough for some people to STOP using data. UBB implemented this way is raping and fleecing the consumer.
The providers do have the right to implement UBB if they see the need. That being said the meters that calculate the UBB must be very accurate and subject to regulation and certification in a similar way that other metered services are.
Correction. The providers have the right to implement UBB if they have the desire to do so. I just think there's going to be a point where people aren't going to buy the product. Also, if they're going to go that route, the meters need to be accurate and they need to NOT charge the user for PUSH content.
This story just smells of rotten from (SBC) at&t... My contracts are almost up. It's time for me to switch cell phone providers again to the less evil provider du jour.
I've gotten rid of Uverse, now it's time to cut the wireless cord!
what are you "just sayin..." (i hope that "saying" dies soon.. ) but anyway..
Sprint isn't going to be far behind the rest of them.. If you haven't noticed, Sprint is already playing games with their services as well. It doesn't matter how they're charging for their services, in the end, the 3 major carriers all wind up getting the same amount for the same level/class of service in the end.
Sprint is slowly eroding what made them "the better company" over the rest... they're just doing it so slow that no one is noticing, as much. But, as of today, they're still provide the better consumer options. I'd still be with them but I wanted the iPhone so I have American Thieves & Thugs as a carrier.
This is a good reason why this whole metered billing is a waste of everyone's time.
Now they're going to have to spend a boatload on legal fees. Along with that they will probably invest in improving the whole process.
So, if they have the money to pay for all of these said items, wouldn't they have the money to simply upgrade areas in their network? Metered billing has nothing to do with network capacity limitations. It's a profit move, plain and simple. Now they're going to see the backlash.
Where is the link or quotes where "AT&T responds". All I see is the accuser side.
It'd be more like "It's a 'benefit' for the customers", which in turn translates into "We love to screw our customers over. Sometimes we screw them multiple times in a single session, which in turn benefits the customer due to them not bending over as much."
I still love T-Mobile's commercial about the guy getting mugged by his cell phone company. Too bad their coverage kinda stinks.
It's still unlimited in that you aren't cut off or charged extra, but your download speeds are dropped. I'm considering going over as it should lower my bill, but the one agent I talked too couldn't tell me what the speeds were lowered too after you hit the 2GB and I haven't had a chance to call them back or stop by a store.
The speeds get throttled to around 60kbps. As a reference, 2g edge can reach over 200kbps in optimal conditions. (usually 100 to 200 kbps). So in other words, they put you in dialup.
You think "for just $79.95" is cheap? That's absolutely absurd, considering what you get in return.
Um.. Unlimited Voice, Text, and Web (2GB Cap) for $79.95 is bad? What do you pay per month? Are you on Straight Talk?
My bill is around $165/mo with 2 lines and a pair of Droid2 Globals. That's including all the data we can eat (haven't been chewed out lately or seen my bill get larger).
"We properly charge for all data that our customers send and receive, including data activity that runs in the background on smartphones and other powerful data devices," said Mark Siegel, an AT&T spokesman, in an e-mail. "Accurate billing is clearly important and, unfortunately, there have been some incorrect claims about our data usage billing practices."
Data usage for emailing, downloading applications, browsing the web, downloading a video or streaming music is all applied to a customers’ data plan, Siegel's email said. So are real-time updates to applications, such as weather updates, sports scores or stock tickers.
"Particularly for smartphones, tablets and other advanced mobile devices, applications are often constantly running in the background and engaged with our network," Siegel's email said. "And AT&T captures your data activity nightly to create a bill record in our systems. This will appear on your bill to be a late night 'charge,' but in fact, the time stamp reflects the time that your device established a connection to the network, not the time that you sent or received data."
The tech firm reportedly purchased a spanking new iPhone and disabled everything that might trigger data usage. After letting the handset sit on but unused for 10 days, it supposedly accumulated charges for 35 different transactions totaling nearly 3,000KB.
Letting sit unused does not mean it isn't communicating and being billed for data movement. If they wanted to prove an iPhone was being billed for no data, they should have put in "Airplane mode" which disconnects the cell radio.
quote:"And AT&T captures your data activity nightly to create a bill record in our systems. This will appear on your bill to be a late night 'charge,' but in fact, the time stamp reflects the time that your device established a connection to the network, not the time that you sent or received data."
AT&T does not tell customers what they are being charged for
Before per byte billing is allowed any ISP implementing metered billing should by law disclose what the meter measures. Does the meter measure only the data pay load or data pay load + overhead and what constitutes overhead?
Furthermore, by law, a list of IP addresses should be established for websites that provide uploads and downloads for security and/or software updates. Uploads and downloads from those websites should not be metered and should be free from charges against the customers allowance.
There have been regulations established to prevent junk faxes. A similar law should be established requiring any website that transmits or receives unsolicited data to a customers IP address pay the ISP for the privilege of doing so and said data not be charged against the customers data allowance. This sort of arrangement is not without precedent since many companies include toll free numbers in their advertisements.
Since the ISP's are using deep packet inspection to snoop on customers data, the same technology can be used to eliminate charges for overhead and other non beneficial data delivered to a consumers IP address.
If the broadband industry does not include these and other protections in their metering systems consumers will never be able to predict or understand what they are being billing for and therefore the system will be both unethical and dishonest!
Re: AT&T does not tell customers what they are being charged for
it will be too easy for someone (like ATT) to make a website - say for customer service - which uses something like jQuery to download huge amounts of data in the background - just to push the data. Having something like uVerse would mean that you probably wouldn't even notice the extra bandwidth consumption; but would approach the caps faster.
Look at some websites which push FLASH 30-second ads to the viewers. Like some children's websites (Disney and Nick). Give a PC to your child, and they accidentally open a new window - and there is your overage.
Or, what if an anonymous hacker group decides that they don't like you - and simply PING your IP for days. The response will drive your usage also.
I agree with you - too many problems with the current UBB plan...
From what Ive seen the Government is going to have to get involved. If ISP want to charge for overages then fine, They WILL have to have their meters certified by the government, Federal or State, Witch is turn will drive up the price of broadband because the government will add new taxes. Then Like said above, people who do adds will have to pay extra and the user should not get charged for the crap they did not want. That's part of the reason I use Add Blocker Plus, Flash Block, and No script. Then people will stop doing Windows Updates and such and all the world computers will catch viruses and it will be chaos. Ok.... Maybe I exaggerated a bit. Ive been thinking of writing my congressman but I don't think he will give a damn, Seeing how is Wife and Kids practically handled his campaign for office this last time Plus Dingle I older than dirt.
"From what Ive seen the Government is going to have to get involved." Yes. They have done such a good job on things like this so far. I am sure that they will look out after OUR interests.
Therefore no involvement is the best solution? How so? I take a mediocre involvement anytime against an unregulated corporate market. That one didn't work out well lately, did it ? At least with gov involvement we have a chance.
·
·
·
Before per byte billing is allowed any ISP implementing metered billing should by law disclose what the meter measures. Does the meter measure only the data pay load or data pay load + overhead and what constitutes overhead?
·
