“AT&T Inc. has been accused in a lawsuit of ‘systematically’ overcharging iPhone customers for data usage with the popular Apple Inc. devices,” Cromwell Schubarth reports for The St. Louis Business Journal.
“The complaint filed by Patrick Hendricks in federal court in California claims a “significant portion” of his data bill is bogus, based on a test done by consultants hired by his lawyers,” Schubarth reports. “The lawyers are seeking class-action status on the suit, which would open it up to millions of U.S. iPhone and iPad owners who until now have only been able to get their service from AT&T.”
Schubarth reports, “Hendricks’ legal and tech team concluded that AT&T was overcharging after they bought an iPhone, turned off all push notification and location services, had no e-mail account configured and no active apps. Yet they say AT&T claimed in a bill that the unused phone had consumed 2.2MB of data.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: 2.2MB of data? Might as well be zero.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
Seriously?
Perhaps the data was used to activate the phone on the network when you turned it on…
There’s not enough info to tell what happened. This would be news if they never turned the phone on and left it in the box… But it appears that they did turn it on.
I’m with AT&T on this one… Through my gritted teeth.
The full quote from the MacRumors article:
“This was discovered by the same independent consulting firm, which purchased an iPhone from an AT&T store, immediately disabled all push notifications and location services, confirmed that no email account was configured on the phone, closed all applications, and let the phone sit untouched for 10 days. During this 10-day period, AT&T billed the test account for 35 data transactions totaling 2,292 KB of usage. This is like the rigged gas pump charging you when you never even pulled your car into the station.”
Pretty damning.
This does not surprise me at all. Do any of you remember that first iPhone bill that was sent out from AT&T that was 225 pages long listing EVERY data transaction. Even sitting idle overnight, the bill listed constant data traffic, and it came up to about 2MB of my data traffic that first month.
The next question is, is this fradulent? If the device is going to consume data as part of its normal operation, that portion should be discounted from a user’s total data bill.
I think a data plan is required with the iPhone, so AT&T should just say that everyone gets about 5MB of free data a month to cover maintenance traffic.
Well, I know that I’ve noticed it. It’s not a lot of data, and well within the bounds of our account, but I’ve never been able to figure out where it comes from. In our case, we have service only through our microcell, have data services turned off and use wi-fi. I figured that they were double-charging for text messages, counting the message and adding on the data it consumed. The problem with the lawsuit is that you don’t get charged on a per-use basis. You’d have to pay for at least 200MB in advance, whether you used it or not, so AT&T isn’t getting anything more for that 2MB.
2.2mb data usage….
Ok I can see the lawsuit having a chance if it were something like 2.2gb… But mb…
And it can be much easier explained (in court) for such little usage.
Hang on folks, don’t get your knickers in a twist. Go to the following Apple Support link and read it over. All my comments are in there except for what the solution to the problem was.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2597310&start=0&tstart=0
When AT&T introduced the limited bandwidth plans, what they neglected to do was reconfigure their server software in regards to billing usage. As a result, those who were on an unlimited plan (and never checked how much they were using anyhow) were probably getting hit for the same thing I was. When I was on unlimited I never checked usage. However, when AT&T notified me about getting close to the limit on my wife’s account, primarily, is when the old anal sphincter tightened up and I got in touch with Apple on it.
In talking to a couple Apple Customer Service reps, I kept insisting something was wrong. That is when Rasheed at Apple and James at AT&T got involved and within a couple days, the problem was sorted. The change that was made in the software was to eliminate the practice of billing individual customers for “maintenance bandwidth” during updates from the server, etc. Ever since the correction was made I have not noticed any more of the “wee hours of the morning” charges as were there before.
Need More Information.
But we Need More Evidence and More Information to make a real true determination, And you are aware that Phones do transmit data to Cell towers all the time through GPS triangulation, I am just not sure if they charge for that calibration and location Service if you have a combination Phone/Data Service since it is attached to the Phone Service plan alone.
AT&T might just query the data link to see if the Service is alive during that period of long inactivity just to test the link.
But I could not see the Customer Being Charged for that.
I Guess we Will Find Out, But looks like it can be seen as a “SETUP”, Can’t point the finger without all the facts.
But when these complaints go out for publication, they get spiced up and not all the facts are put in the small story line, I’m going to search out the original complaint and see what was done, if all investigative facts are not sealed until the court date.
Peace.
Wow! 2.2 Mb of data.
I think it is part of the network system services for using a smartphone. Sort of like pinging.
It is part of a required data plan to enable a smartphone. it doesn’t mean you have to be using the data but perhaps it is necessary for the system and the phone to be transmitting data. I’m sure all service providers do this. Doesn’t look malicious to me, 2.2 Mb.
The dude should have just turned off cellular data but nooo, needs to go out and sue.
Lawyers, they’ll sue over everything. Where’s the “overcharge?” Is it for those who have a 200MB plan who go over their 200MB by 2.2MB? How many people have done that?
@KenC
“Is it for those who have a 200MB plan who go over their 200MB by 2.2MB? How many people have done that?”
Probably a helluva lot who have dropped down to the limited 200mb plan but never thought to check periodically just to see if they were within their limits. One of the Apple Customer Service reps I talked to checked her’s while we were on the phone and saw the same discrepancies. Did you read the link I posted above. It should answer your questions.
This thread also refers http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2450738&start=0&tstart=0.
Seems a lot of people are surprised by the amount of data usage. A lot of these are explained by background apps, push notification, etc., but some subset of people still experienced unexplained data usage.
In my own experience, the only problem I could see was that the data usage on the AT&T bill did not match the data usage on the phone. When I switched from unlimited to the 200MB plan, my data usage ballooned to over 600MB in one month, having never before been greater than 120MB. I put this down to enthusiastic use of my new iPhone 4 and switched to the 2G plan. Then my wife started noticing excessive data usage, too. At that point, we started tracking the usage reported by AT&T and the usage reported by the phone. At first, these did not line up, but at some point the problem mysteriously vanished.
So, I don’t have “proof” and even if I did, in my opinion this is nothing more than a bug – the data usage reported by the phone and network should agree to within a reasonable percentage. Still, I think something was seriously wrong, as JES42 has reported, and that AT&T has fixed it and is now trying to cover up whatever it was.
Still, a lawsuit over 2.2MB? They could at least have found someone who went over the 2G limit….
By the way, the excessive data usage charges did not appear if we both turned our phones off at night. Don’t try and charge it though, that wakes it back up and the problem always came back for us.
I don’t think many here get the point.
When you’re on unlimited plan, this doesn’t matter. When you are on a limited one, then AT&T is in fact NOT giving you 200MB for $15 per month, as they are promising. If the phone generates data traffic for whatever internal purposes that are NOT your own usage (direct or indirect), none of such traffic should possibly go against your monthly limit. Saying that 2.2MB is trivial is not relevant. Who gets to decide how much is too much? Those 2.2MB amount to over 15 cents. That is actual, real money. Why would anyone in their sane mind want to donate money to AT&T?
When you hook up your Mac (or a PC) to the internet and turn it on, data traffic begins flowing to and from it immediately. Hackers from all over the world are continuously running port scanners across all connected computing devices, looking for holes to exploit and zombies to recruit into botnets. I wouldn’t be surprised if this surreptitious traffic on iPhones is in fact port scanning by hacking automatons. After all, this data traffic can be in either direction, on any port, and without a specific request.
Still, even if that is the case, there should really be some way to ensure that the 200MB (or 2GB) you are allocated is actually used by YOU and not someone else.
Actually, 2.2MB was over just 10 days. If we extrapolate, that would make it 6.6MB per month, making it over 50 cents worth of data that was paid for, but not used.
MDN…when you go to the market…would you care if the deli guy included the package weight when charging you for your pound of salami?
If this were Microsoft…you’d be all over this story.
so how much did they even charge the dude for 2.2MB of data?
if you can afford an iphone and even with the limited data plan.. im sure you can easily afford the possibly $1 for 2.2MB of data use
2.2 mb of data multiplied by how many million iphones/pads?
If I created an App that caused 1¢ to be taken from every bank account, most people wouldn’t notice or even care if they did notice.
And I’d be rich.
But if I got caught, I’d go to prison for bank robbery.
What’s the difference?
AT&T charged me for 2mb last month of data when I had used none, zero, nada.
I called them and they dropped the charges, they also dropped $118 worth of charges. I believe they’re systematically screwing everyone of their customers. Count me in on a lawsuit.
jtc – you enjoy bending over?
I understand that Visual Voicemail uses up your data plan. If that’s really true, AT&T should reveal that. So maybe they’ve got 2.2 MB of voicemail data.