AT&T ‘Unlimited’ Customers Still Awaiting Their $12 Payout More Than A Decade After Being Throttled And Lied To
from the a-nation-of-wrist-slaps dept
In 2014 the FTC sued AT&T for selling “unlimited” wireless data plans with very real and annoying limits.
The lawsuit noted that, starting in 2011, AT&T began selling “unlimited” plans that actually throttled upwards of 90 percent of your downstream speeds after using just two or three gigabytes of data. AT&T spent years trying to wiggle out of the lawsuit via a variety of legal gymnastics.
In late 2019, AT&T finally agreed to a $60 million settlement with the FTC without actually admitting any wrongdoing. Consumers who were lied to and ripped off for years were supposed to get $12 each. It’s now 2023, and AT&T’s still trying to find all of the customers AT&T lied to more than a decade ago:
Current subscribers were given a credit on their accounts and many former subscribers were mailed refund checks. Now AT&T is working to disburse the remaining $7 million to former customers it didn’t have contact information for.
Don’t pull a muscle or anything. U.S. residents who were AT&T “unlimited” customers between October 1, 2011 and June 30, 2015 can file a claim with the FTC. Just remember not to spend it all in one place.
The pathetic payout could have been worse had AT&T succeeded in flinging these folks toward binding arbitration, a system advertised as more effective than class actions despite being demonstrably even more lopsided and pathetic. AT&T’s 2010 Supreme Court victory ensured that forcing customers into binding arbitration using mouse print legalese is now acceptable standard practice for companies nationwide.
Wireless carriers have been advertising “unlimited” plans and then lying about their very real limits for the better part of twenty years now. Many are still doing it and will continue to do it. Why? The penalty is always a tiny, tiny, fraction of the money earned by being misleading. The only real lesson here for AT&T is that stalling and litigation can easily blunt accountability for misleading or predatory business practices.
Since this case started, AT&T has also had a very successful run gutting most FCC oversight during the Trump administration (including popular net neutrality rules), ensuring the company’s less likely than ever to be held meaningfully accountable for its extremely detailed history of lying to and ripping off its own customers (and the government).
Filed Under: broadband, ftc, network management, throttling, unlimited, wireless
Companies: at&t
