Thread: AT&T Accused of Deceiving Consumers

AT&T Accused of Deceiving Consumers on Unlimited Data Plan

By EDWARD WYATT OCT. 28, 2014



AT&T notified some customers in 2011 that they might face “reduced data speeds,” but the F.T.C. said that the company failed to say that speeds would be reduced by up to 95 percent. CreditRichard Drew/Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday charged AT&T with deceiving smartphone customers who signed up for an “unlimited” data plan only to find that AT&T drastically reduced the speed at which their phones could use the Internet once they had used a certain amount of data each month.

Since 2011, data speeds have been reduced for more than 3.5 million AT&T customers on more than 25 million occasions, the F.T.C. said.

AT&T notified customers in mid-2011 that they might face “reduced data speeds” if they were in the top 5 percent of users. But the commission said that notification was inadequate because it did not specify that customers’ speeds would be reduced by up to 95 percent — essentially making their smartphones inoperable for the purpose of accessing the Internet.

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“AT&T promised its customers ‘unlimited’ data, and in many instances, it has failed to deliver on that promise,” said Edith Ramirez, the F.T.C. chairwoman. “The issue here is simple: ‘Unlimited’ means unlimited.”

The company said the accusations were “baseless and have nothing to do with the substance of our network management program.”

“We have been completely transparent with customers since the very beginning,” said Wayne Watts, AT&T’s senior executive vice president and general counsel. “We informed all unlimited data-plan customers via bill notices and a national news release that resulted in nearly 2,000 news stories, well before the program was implemented. In addition, this program has affected only about 3 percent of our customers, and before any customer is affected, they are also notified by text message.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/te...data-plan.html

AT&T also throttled down the speed of their DSL service to try to force customers to sign up for their new U-verse service in which they bundle, home phones , TV, internet, and cell phones so they can charge you more for everything you get, all in one bill.

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