A new lawsuit claims that the AT&T iPhone billing overcharges Apple phone and tablet owners and includes “phantom traffic.”
The lawsuit was filed by Patrick Hendricks of California and the suit comes after his AT&T iPhone billing seemed high. He subscribed to the $15 data plan for 200 MB of data but he said he was constantly having to pay more for exceeding it. He claims that the overage charges aren’t fair either – he was charged $15 overage even though his usage was 223 MB.
“AT&T’s billing system for iPhone and iPad data transactions is like a rigged gas pump that charges for a full gallon when it pumps only nine-tenths of a gallon into your car’s tank,” the complaint said.
AT&T has denied the claim and said it will fight it in court and it should. This lawsuit is saying that the company artificially inflates data costs to get a “significant portion” of its $1.1 billion in wireless revenue.
One of the complaints that have followed AT&T iPhone and Windows Phone 7 billing around is that some users will report huge chunks of data being sent overnight when the user is asleep. The reason for this is that the carrier’s billing will lump data usage together, so a 30 MB data usage at 2:30 a.m. on your bill doesn’t meant that’s exactly when you used the data. I think by clearing that up, it could help avoid a lot of confusion.
There’s also the change that a third-party app is causing users to go over their data limits. Microsoft recently said that a third-party solution was causing data leakage and this was eventually revealed to be an issue related to Yahoo Mail.
AT&T iPhone billing may cause more data usage than some realize because of the wealth of apps that users download from the App Store.
[Via 9 to 5 Mac, ComputerWorld, photo]
