An irate AT&T customer is suing that company for inflated data charges from Apple’s iPhones and iPads. The customer, Patrick Hendricks, accused the company of maintaining a billing system that resembles a “rigged gas pump that charges for a full gallon when it pumps only nine-tenths of a gallon into your car’s tank.”
Hendricks currently has a $15-per-month, 200MB data plan with AT&T, but he said the company charged him for “phantom data transactions” that never took place. The lawsuit, filed in a California district court, quotes a report by an independent consulting firm hired by the plaintiff’s lawyers. The report, which followed a two-month study of AT&T billing, said it found that the telecommunications giant regularly overbills for data by as much as 14 percent.
‘Systematically Overstates’ Data Use
This study, the lawsuit said, shows that an AT&T bill “systematically overstates the amount of data used on each data transaction involving an iPhone or iPad account.” The lawsuit also said the consulting firm bought an iPhone and turned off all apps and services — location services, push notifications, even e-mail. The consulting firm said it received data charges from 35 data transactions over 10 days, totaling about 2.3 MB.
Hendricks is suing for breach of contract and “unjust enrichment,” and is looking for costs and damages.
AT&T denies the charges, saying it has “created tools that let our customers check their voice and data usage at any time during their billing cycle to help eliminate bill surprises.”
The lawsuit comes within months of the Verizon Wireless data embarrassment. In October, the telecommunications giant paid $25 million “as a voluntary payment” to settle a Federal Communications Commission case about inflated data charges. The company also gave refunds to 15 million customers for errors made in data charges.
In a statement at the time, Verizon…