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AT&T Sued For Systematic iPhone Overbilling

Posted by timothy on from the so-android-users-are-left-in-the-cold? dept.

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."

8 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. AT&T's Fault? by Kneo24 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nothing in the article shows how it couldn't have been the phone itself doing it, not AT&T doing it. If the device is ON, but not being used, well, there's a lot of shit that goes on in the back-end of things, like update checking, etc...

    1. Re:AT&T's Fault? by nhstar · · 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.

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    2. Re:AT&T's Fault? by halcyon1234 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not that people need proof or anything to sue these days, but...

      1. I would have had (at least) one phone with it's battery out (or dead, or both)
      2. Another phone with all it's services turned off, and the phone turned off.
      3. Another phone with all it's services turned off, and the phone left on
      4. Another with it's services on, and the phone off
      5. Another with it's services on, and the phone on

      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.

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      UTF-8: There and Back Again
    3. Re:AT&T's Fault? by daniorerio · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Maybe they did, but the phones turned off didn't get billed so they're not mentioned?

      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...

    4. Re:AT&T's Fault? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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 Apple uses an inefficient data serialization mechanism to transmit requests and responses over the network for update checking. Maybe it checks for updates twice as often. Maybe the fact that visual voicemail uses data plays a role.

      Point is that maybe from your uninformed point of view it makes sense that you should "feel" like 2 MB is too much (as the article states 2 MB, not 3 MB), but I highly doubt that you could back that up with real data that would stand up to peer review.

      A wise man once said "assume ignorance not malice".

      I should add that underworked attorneys are filing BS lawsuits like this all across the country in a desperate attempt to generate some cash. The cases are often dismissed and if not they rarely if ever go to trial. The pleadings and early motions are expressly designed by the plaintiffs to generate a quick cash settlement from the defendant to avoid the extremely expensive e-discovery procedures, and the damaging process of establishing a national class.

    5. Re:AT&T's Fault? by Anonymous Coward · · 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?

  2. Re:Accident or intentional? by Eraesr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've also noticed many phones make it rather easy to accidentally dial numbers.

    Oh yeah they totally do this on purpose

  3. Re:Can't wait to see the settlement by SecurityGuy · · Score: 3, 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.