An Oklahoma woman is suing AT&T and Radio Shack after she received a $5,077 bill for a month of data service she thought would cost $60 on a $99 netbook computer she purchased from the electronics giant.
The plaintiff, Billie Parks, charges AT&T and Radio Shack “conspired to promote, market and sell netbook computers and the required AT&T 24-month DataConnect plan by utilizing false, misleading and inaccurate advertising.”
Specifically, the lawsuit says the companies utilized a customer service summary and wireless service agreement which were “deceptive, misleading and utterly incomprehensible to the average customer with regard to ‘additional charges’ and how those charges would be priced.”
Further, the lawsuit says the companies deliberately misled consumers as to the actual cost of the DataConnect plan with respect to usage of more than 5 gigabytes per month. Five gigabytes is roughly the equivalent of eight compact disks of music.
“Consumers were not told by the Defendents, nor could consumers have reasonably discenrned from the paperwork that usage of double or triple the 5GB covered by the $60 ‘rate plan charge’ would result in charges running into the thousands of dollars.”
The lawsuit seeks class action status for all consumers who bought the $99 netbooks from Radio Shack with the two-year, $60 per month service agreements from AT&T.
We’ve been hearing more and more stories like this where consumers are hit with whopping bills when they exceed certain caps on wireless data service.
A consumer who asked that we not identify him told us he recently got a $3530 bill on an AT&T $60-a-month wireless data plan for his computer. He says his family accidentally exceeded to 5GB monthly limit, using roughly double that amount. He says he received no notice he had exceeded the limit, although AT&T contends it sent him an email.
He protested the size of the bill to AT&T, noting it was a roughly 5,000% increase over the initial $60 per month charge. He says AT&T has recently agreed to revisit the matter, but it has not yet been resolved.
“I am willing to pay a slight surcharge for our oversight, but do not believe it is reasonable to be billed thousands of dollars for Internet usage,” he says.
We are hopeful more consumers will come forward with these kind of stories and the “you should have read the small print” arguments they get from the companies all too often. It shouldn’t take a magnifying glass and an advanced technical degree to figure out when and how a $60 a month service plan will suddenly morph into $5,000 bill.
Big, sophisticated communications companies such as AT&T should clearly inform consumers about the draconian charges they will impose when a limit is exceeded. And it shouldn’t be buried in the fine print of a 20-page service agreement in language most of us mortals have no chance of understanding.
DTV Coupon Backlog Finally Cleared
The federal agency in charge of the digital to analog converter box coupon program says it has cleared out a backlog of four million applications that had piled up after it ran out of money in January.
The National Telecommunications Information Administration says it is accepting new applications as well as requests for new coupons from households with expired ones.
The problems with the coupon program were one of the main reasons the final deadline for full-power broadcasters to switch off their traditional analog signals was moved from February 17th to June 12th.
To apply for coupons or reapply to replace expired ones go to www.dtv2009.gov.
