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AT&T Sued For Systematic iPhone Overbilling
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."
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...
Tfa didnt say how much data was transferred during that period (or was that 2 megs pulled totally from the hat). Not having ever used an iPhone I suppose there is some sort of a counter you can reset to see how much data is transferred. Is the all apps off supposed to stop all activity or is there still some background programs accessing the data network occasionally?
It uses data trafic.
BTW I assume that they had turned off e-mail checking, of course.
you have RTFA
Well, via Apple Insider I found a more complete detailed account with AT&T's response:
"Transparent and accurate billing is a top priority for AT&T," an AT&T representative has responded, speaking with MacNN. "In fact, we've created tools that let our customers check their voice and data usage at any time during their billing cycle to help eliminate bill surprises. We have only recently learned of the complaint, but I can tell you that we intend to defend ourselves vigorously."
It is odd that it seems to only be reported by iPhone and iPad users.
My work here is dung.
I'm calling B.S. I had an AT&T iphone, and even with full bars and every internet app open it takes WAAAAY longer than 10 days to download 2,292 KB on their network.
-Inigo Carmine
Slightly more informative article with a link to a PDF of the complaint: http://www.pcworld.com/article/218381/atandt_accused_of_overbilling_iphone_ipad_users.html
AT&T is Apple's partner and should be fully aware this happens. If it's a technical issue, there should be warnings and workaround, preventive measures. There is little info on how to prevent extra charges on the phones, for obvious reasons. I've also noticed many phones make it rather easy to accidentally dial numbers.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Slashdot: Stop fucking around with basic HTML elements! The above has an OL in it. Okay, all you user style people, time for another entry in the "red pen" edition of Slashdot css:
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list-style: circle !important;
margin-left:25px !important;
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UTF-8: There and Back Again
I know this is about the iPhone but since I have my iPad data plan with AT&T... I had issues with my iPad. I had it turned OFF one weekend. I turned it back on and within 5 minutes I received an email saying my data plan had maxed out after 2 1/2 weeks into the plan (250MB). So I renewed the plan mid month. I wasn't sure what in the world I could have done to cause this as it'd never happened before. I only have two pages of apps, none had notifications turned on, none had 'allow location' , etc. My email was manual only when I'm in mail. I use the iPad when I'm at work to check email once or twice a day and I am sometimes on Yahoo IM. But rarely. I don't stream vids or play online games, etc. Other than that I use the iPad as an ereader and for Pages. No reason at all to cause such data usage. 2 weeks later I'm told my data is out AGAIN. I do a complete reset of the iPad and within 5 days, I received 4 consecutive emails within an hour, one said my data plan had only 20 MB left, one said 18, one said less than 10 and one said out of data. I called AT&T and they suggested I upgrade to the 2GB plan. I said that I had no new apps on the iPad, had done a complete reset, am doing nothing more than I've done with it since May, so there's NO reason for it to all of a sudden suck so much data. We checked notifications, we checked location services, email and could find nothing to cause this. We even called Apple Care. No one could find a reason. And LO! after my complaint to AT&T, I haven't had that problem again even though it's been almost 6 weeks. Even though we changed none of my settings, as they were already turned off. I find that a bit suspect. To their credit, AT&T was gracious enough to give me one month's free iPad and iPhone services 'for my troubles', which was rather decent of them as the gent on the phone heard how irate I was becoming.
Wait a minute, lawyers are upset about systematic over-billing?
I'd say this is a "the pot calling the kettle black" moment, but it's more like "tar calling granite black."
I have no doubt that the lawyers will bill AT&T for every minute of those 10 days they "monitored" that iPhone...
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
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.
If you read the actual complaint there are three claims. One of them is that data services were charged for were data not requested and that seems to be the one that everyone is focused on. Maybe there's background services, maybe not. However, a better explanation is actually that there is only one issue - the last one in the complaint. This complaint is that charges are not always applied at the same time that the usage occurs. I know that this one is true - I've witnessed it myself, was penalized for it, then AT&T forgave the penalty (more on that in a second).
This billing lag could easily explain why data charges were incurred during a period of time when the phone was supposedly inactive.
My daughter recently got an iPhone with the 200MB plan. We were monitoring her data usage regularly and towards the end of the billing cycle we saw that she would go over if she continued with the same consumption. So she stopped using the data apps... she went over anyway and we were billed for $30 instead of the $15 we had budgeted for. After my daughter swore that she had not used the web in the last week, I called AT&T to find out what the deal was. I was finally able to confirm with a tech that indeed, some data activity might not be billed for days after the usage. He told me that he could confirm that my daughter had actually exceeded her limit a day or so before she ceased activity. AT&T was kind enough to drop the extra $15 since their tool had misguided us. I checked and as far as I can tell, AT&T makes no claims as to whether billing for services rendered occurs at the time of rendering.