AT&T Threatens To Shut Off Service of Customer Who Won Throttling Case

suraj.sun writes in about the recent small claims case against AT&T's throttling of 'unlimited' plans. From the article: "AT&T has about 17 million smartphone customers on 'unlimited' plans, and has started slowing down service for users who hit certain traffic thresholds. Spaccarelli maintained at his February 24 small-claims hearing that AT&T broke its promise to provide 'unlimited' service, and the judge agreed. In a letter dated Friday, a law firm retained by AT&T Inc. is threatening to shut off Matthew Spaccarelli's phone service if he doesn't sit down to talk. Spaccarelli has posted online the documents he used to argue his case and encourages other AT&T customers copy his suit."

Comments

Duh?

[MightyYar]

I have no love for AT&T and I'm glad the guy won, but if one of my customers sued me, I'd drop them in a heartbeat!

Re:Duh?

[ClioCJS]

It's not actually always legal. For example, if you take government tax breaks for providing a publi service, you don't get to pick and choose which public, even if they are suing you.

Dunno the specifics here, but cell phones are a great way for companies to get a 2nd chance at changing the laws that were already settled for landlines, and that's part of what we're seeing here.

My landline company cannot legally deny me service, EVEN IF i'm suing them. But part of that is the psuedomonopoly of landlines, which doesn't apply to cell phones. But probably should. Especially if they take one penny from the government, even in the form of tax breaks.

Re:Duh?

[magarity]

and I'm glad the guy won

I for one wonder why he won; he admits to sucking down the bandwidth due to tethering which is a clear violation of the terms of service he signed up for as part of getting unlimited bandwidth. If he'd used it all watching videos and whatever else you can do with just the phone itself, I'd be completely supportive. But are all the people complaining about ATT throttling them using so much due to tethering? If so, I've suddenly lost all interest and sympathy. Here I thought all the complaints were from people using their phones' internal capabilities and getting cut off.

Re:Duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your landline company couldn't drop you for no reason, and they couldn't drop you solely because you had sued them, but that doesn't mean they can't drop you for any reason. The guy who sued has admitted he's used his iPhone for tethering, in direct violation of his ToS, which gives AT&T every right to drop his account. The only reason they haven't already is they were clearly hoping to avoid this publicity. It's hard to come up with a direct analogy to a landline since there aren't many limitations on landlines, but if you were using something like a blue box on your landline to get free long distance, then your phone company would disconnect you in a heartbeat, public service or not.

Re:Duh?

[Bengie]

"AT&T isn't really advertising falsely, the data is unlimited. The speeds are limited."

If I had an "unlimited" data plan, but after 5GB, I reduced your speed to 0, it's still unlimited, just relative to the new current rate.

Re:Duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is what we're talking about here...

Since they don't CLEARLY disclose that it's "unlimited data" in their advertising, it's misleading at best. This is why they lost the damn lawsuit- you can't advertise it one way and then take it basically away in the fine print- that's called bait-and-switch and it's illegal.

I honestly wish people would QUIT trying to follow the weaseling that the companies use- the law is rather explicit on this subject,

"Unlimited" means just that- that they're not limiting the use of the resource to it's fullest. "Unlimited data" isn't even accurate as they're actually limiting just how much data you can consume by throttling. So, folks, QUIT running that one up the flagpole. Doesn't match the reality of things. Doesn't match their requirements per law.

Re:Duh?

[GameboyRMH]

You are wrong, but at the same time it's true that unlimited isn't truly unlimited. Here's how it works.

Say you're on a "true unlimited" monthly data plan, and you get a download speed of 100kbps. You're actually buying 1 month's worth of data @ 100kbps, or about 259gb. Now that number is not infinity but that's what people expect when you say unlimited - unlimited data at the advertised speed, the only limitation being time itself. If you offer a 100kbps plan that doesn't let you download 259gb per month, and call it unlimited, that's when people will feel that they've been lied to. There is not only the natural limitation of time, but also you're not delivering the advertised speed.

Re:Duh?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Actually his logic suggests that ATT is legally obligated to not put artificial barriers like throttling to the data access.

Re:Duh?

[HapSlappy_2222]

If I go into a restaurant that advertises "all I can eat!" it means I can eat as much as I want, until I cannot or do not want to eat any more. If I'm a little dude, this will be far less than if I'm a big dude, but the restaurant shouldn't be allowed to prepare food for the buffet more slowly if a fat bunch of folks blunders through the doors. If they do, is it really "All you can eat"? No, it's "eat all that we're willing to bring you."

As far as inviting customers into a buffet type purchase... well, even the unlikely scenario of having just one single person consume ALL of the restaurant's resources is the risk of advertising an all-you-can-eat buffet. The risk is hedged against the very powerful advertising draw of a "limitless" purchase. What the owner is hoping for is the overall average of food consumed/person will be profitable. At the very least, the restaurant should inform customers that after x plates of food they can only have x more plates of food per hour, and let them decide if the price is worth it. But look what just happened! Our restaurant lost the draw of the "limitless" at the expense of hemming their (larger) customers in. When selling stuff, you can't have it both ways.

This is what AT&T (and others) have been advertising their "Unlimited" plans as. "Use as much data as you want; hell, glut yourself on it!! Err.... unless you're identified as a data glutton, in which case you have to consume your unlimited data no faster than we're willing to arbitrarily provide it.". Slowing the speeds artificially after a customer consumes an arbitrary amount of data is the issue. You cannot do this and still attempt to advertise the plan as "Unlimited". Nobody's asking AT&T to provide both unlimited speeds and unlimited data; we're simply asking them to allow us to use all the data we want, at the advertised rate, or to stop marketing the plan as "Unlimited" entirely, because it's not.

Now I'm hungry, and yes, I'm blaming AT&T for that, too. Dammit.

Does sitting down help?

[mattdm]

I mean, I'll try anything to improve AT&T signal reception, but I'm skeptical. I tried sitting, standing, and even lying down, and it doesn't really seem to change anything.

Re:Does sitting down help?

[WarpedCore]

Have you tried bending over?

Re:Does sitting down help?

[AliasMarlowe]

If I had mod points they would go to this.

Vaseline might be even more helpful...

Re:Does sitting down help?

[Guppy]

Have you tried bending over?

Well, that definitely made it easier to take what I was receiving from AT&T, but it didn't help with the cell phone signal one bit.

Omitted in Summary

[JeanCroix]

In TFA, it is stated that AT&T's threat to discontinue his service is based on his admission of tethering, which is against the TOS he agreed to. Not that their tactics here aren't shady, but they do have a contractual basis (excuse) for the threat.

Re:The Guy Admits He Violated the TOS

[s73v3r]

No, because the judge correctly ruled that a "no tethering" rule was, in fact, a limit on the service they sold him, and therefore was not allowed if they gave him unlimited service.