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."

Comments

AT&T's Fault?

[Kneo24]

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...

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[nhstar]

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.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Gaygirlie]

The article indeed doesn't give much information, but it does say they disabled a bunch of running services on the phone, and left it unattended for only 10 days. 10 days, with no apps on and no user interaction is simply too little to rack up 3 megabytes of data. As a reference point I don't own an iPhone so I don't know how relevant it is, but my N900 only racks up about 25kb-100kb a day at max if I turn off mail-checking, even less if I disable automatic updates. As such I can't help but feel the 3MB of data for 10 days is indeed inflated.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[halcyon1234]

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.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[dkleinsc]

So your argument is that if AT&T builds in an app that checks with AT&T for updates, and can't be disabled, AT&T should be able to bill customers for the privilege of having that update checker? Because the phone in question was running no applications whatsoever.

The obligatory car analogy: Do you think it would be ok for automakers to charge customers for the privilege of replacing recalled parts? (especially considering the Fight Club math of cost of recall >= probability of failure * units sold * average court settlement)

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

> If they would of have

Would HAVE. HAVE.

Please, think logically about your language before distorting it through laziness.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[daniorerio]

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...

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the problem was Yahoo! Mail. Read article here: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/01/windows-phone-7-phantom-data-leaker-unmasked-as-yahoo-mail-fi/

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[AmberBlackCat]

I can't find my previous post to link to it so I'll have to repeat myself. My last sprint phone would charge us for data if I used the mp3 player. And it would do this even if I had the internet capability turned off. If you use the web browser, it asks if you want to turn the internet back on in order to continue. If you play an mp3, it turns the internet on and starts charging by the minute with no warning, even though you're just playing a file on a memory card. To make things worse, external contact with the phone could launch the music player. I guess one of the external buttons was a music button.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[mcrbids]

Nothing in the article shows how it couldn't have been the phone itself doing it, not AT&T doing it.

I'm guessing you haven't done much business with AT&T? Because this is AT&T that we're talking about. Making up random crap to put on the invoice and then sending you to collections seems to me to be what they're all about!

My daughter was a foreign exchange student in Germany. I signed up for an international calling plan ($5/month, $0.10/min) before calling her. AT&T was nice enough to charge me the $5/month, and then $4.00 per minute, making my $90 bill closer to $4,000.000. (Yes, that's right!) I spent HOURS on the phone with their support reps, with names like "Mike" and "Sally" with barely comprehensible Indian accents and horrid call quality, none of whom seemed able to do anything at all to correct the bill.

After 4 months of angry-looking bills and threats to send to collections, I called AT&T and threatened to quit their service. Guess what? I ended up talking to somebody named "Sally" with an AMERICAN accent who corrected the $4,000 bill in 10 minutes! Thinking balance had been restored to the Universe, I decided to leave it be.

The next month, they overcharged me $20. If you've read this far, you're probably thinking: "Oh, this guy just had a bad experience... this isn't usual"..

There's more!

A few months after all this, my son wanted an iPhone and wanted me to co-sign. So I showed up at the AT&T store to find out that their "co-sign" is better read as "it's my contract". Smarting from the previous experience, I refused to sign, and left the store.

A year later, they sent me to collections for $150 for breach of contract. AT&T sent me to collections for a contract I never even signed. It took another two hours and 6 call transfers to clear this up.

Do you think I *ever* want to do business with AT&T?

AT&T's Response

[eldavojohn]

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.

More info and PDF

[EuclideanSilence]

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

More "newsyle" fuckup

[halcyon1234]

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:

.commentBody ul, .commentBody ul li
{
  list-style: circle !important;
  margin-left:25px !important;
}

.commentBody ol, .commentBody ol li
{
  list-style: decimal !important;
  margin-left:25px !important;
}

Re:More "newsyle" fuckup

[popo]

Uh.. the OL seems to be working for me. I'm using FF 3.6

Re:Accident or intentional?

[Eraesr]

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

Oh yeah they totally do this on purpose

Same thing happened to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Lawyers upset by over-billing?

[scrib]

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...

Re:Can't wait to see the settlement

[SecurityGuy]

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.

Lag time

[joeyblades]

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.