Subscribe[flv width=”596″ height=”356″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/NBC ATT Internet Overcharging 5-24-11.flv[/flv]
A new consumer investigation by NBC’s Today Show found that AT&T may be systematically overcharging customers for their broadband usage, fleecing customers for countless sums in overlimit fees. With no government oversight to guarantee usage measurements are accurate and fairly measure usage, customers have to take AT&T’s “word” for the accuracy of their billing, and now that the company has extended Internet Overcharging to its DSL and U-verse customers, AT&T could earn millions in ill-gotten gains if the claims of overestimated usage are true. AT&T responded, claiming consumers have a misunderstanding of how data is consumed and billed. NBC quotes AT&T as saying most customers who exceed their limits do not incur fees, which will come as quite a surprise to customers who are routinely billed $15 or more for excessive use charges on wireless plans. Thanks to Stop the Cap! reader Scott for sharing the news. (4 minutes)
Who are the crooks again?
Here is something interesting for our readers. A producer for the Today show called me several weeks ago looking for help on this story. The law firm bringing the suit was not too open about revealing their “independent lab” who did the measurements. We suggested the Today Show do their own tests, something that remains unclear in the above report. While a small part of AT&T’s response is plausible, especially with respect to background tasks and automatic updates, when the company is that stingy with data caps, especially with that 200MB plan, it should be an automatic assumption any consumer… Read more »
Apparently the only “misunderstanding” by consumers was AT&T’s metered billing being assumed to be fair and accurate without anybody watching…
One thing I am curious about is to see if whether or not the iPhone was on Wi-Fi during the same 10 day period where the phone should have been sitting idle. I know iOS runs background tasks that may consume data, such as the receiving of SMS/Text messages, but even iPods when they’re sitting idle hardly consume a thing. I feel as though the news article here is lacking some information. I wouldn’t doubt it though to hear of a company rigging their meters though. It’s the old, traditional Casino style “We want your money!” scam with their slot… Read more »
Ars Technica’s article said this: To confirm the “phantom” data charges, a computer engineer hired by the law firms involved in the case took a brand new iPhone, turned off all push notifications and location services, did not set up any e-mail accounts, and made sure no applications were running. After 10 days of sitting idle, AT&T recorded 35 instances of data use totaling over 2MB. How the test was done We contacted Davis to verify the methodology used by the independent consulting firm whose tests showed the billing discrepancies. He explained how tests were able to determine that AT&T’s… Read more »
The other argument is going to be consumers screaming about web ads and AT&T’s own junk messages, all paid for by users as deducted usage from their allowance. I really do understand the arguments about congestion on wireless networks and there is some evidence to back it up. But providers like AT&T are using that evidence to profiteer with these prices. My guess is they assumed they’d set caps low and then market forces would gradually force them to relax the limits. Only now it appears we’re going to have a nice comfy duopoly between AT&T and Verizon, so those… Read more »
Run DD-WRT on your router and it keeps track of your usage by the day and rolls it up to usage by the month.
How can we set the billing cycle date in DD-WRT to make it’s meter align with AT&T’s billing cycle?
I am not sure you can. DD-WRT in its current implementation relies on calendar months, not billing cycles, to count usage. Also keep in mind I’ve seen a ton of threads from DD-WRT users who report that usage often doesn’t correspond with what AT&T ultimately counts as your usage.
AT&T’s argument is completely negated by the fact that they bought a brand new iPhone and, assumedly, didn’t install any apps other than the ones that come stock on the phone. Considering Apple is very strict when it comes to updates, I highly doubt they’d let apps update in the background without user confirmation to begin with. So, there’s a brand new iPhone with all data-using services turned off (we just have to assume they didn’t miss one) that’s still incurring charges. Well, AT&T, your argument is invalid.