Suit over $5K netbook 3G data bill; AT&T says "read the TOS"

Source: Ars Technica

Parks purchased a netbook from RadioShack in December of 2008 after the electronics retailer began advertising a heavily subsidized netbook deal: for $99.99 and a two-year AT&T contract, customers could buy a netbook with AT&T's DataConnect plan, allowing them to get online from anywhere. The DataConnect service costs roughly $60 per month before the usual taxes and fees.

According to Parks' complaint, she was warned by RadioShack that her first AT&T bill might be a bit more than expected due to a $36 activation fee, a month's worth of service billed in advance, and prorated charges from when she signed up. She was not, however warned that any Internet data usage over 5GB would result in "astronomical additional charges running into the thousands of dollars." She claims that the Customer Service Summary she received states that additional charges apply, but it was impossible for consumers to determine what those charges would be.

Read more: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/03/suit-over-5k-netbook-3g-data-bill-att-says-read-the-tos.ars

5G is a whole lotta email and web pages, and is really atypical of your average internet user. She was doing some heavy bandwidth work with that machine, which is not really the intent of the product, IMO.


That said, let me reiterate: AT&T sucks. I had a billing issue with them years back -- they're screw up, not mine -- and after it was finally resolved I told them to get lost and have never looked back.

It is a lot of email and web pages - but she had a Netbook and netbooks are meant to run linux. You don't always get a linux install right the first time, and netbooks don't have CD/DVD rom drives to install it with.

Let's say you want to blow away Linpus Linux on an Aspire One netbook and put Ubuntu on it (like I did). One of two options you have is a PXE network install - going to Ubuntu's server on boot and installing every bit about the OS over the Internet. This can be a gig and a half in an hour. What if the network glitches during that time? Oops. Gotta try again...


Being a linux user, I can tell you hitting 5G in a day is easy as hell... and nothing illegal being done in the least. It's a netbook, this is what they're *meant* to do. AT&T must've known this and figured a few unix geeks would get hit. Screw AT&T.

and the scenario you describe, while absolutely plausible, is not typical. I think you'd have to admit that as well.

5gigs isn't that much. It's the equivalent of downloading 5-10 full-length movies, depending on compression. I've watched numerous full-length films from my free Hulu and pay Netflix accounts. I would consider watching films this way a fairly typical and perfectly acceptable use of my broadband access account. I am paying for the pipe and the delivery and AT&T is padding the bill with this 5gig cap nonsense.

And how long it takes to consume that bandwidth.

I'm wondering if that's a typo, because I've seen cellular data plans where the download limits were mere megabytes, not gigabytes, before ridiculous rates like $0.20 per KILObyte would kick in. When I took a trip to London last year, bringing my iPhone with me, I had to very carefully monitor my data usage when I wasn't using my hotel's wifi because the AT&T data limit on my plan was very small, just a few MBs, for out-of-country use (I had to pay extra before leaving to get even that small limit and semi-reasonable overseas voice rates), and the over-plan data rate was insane.

I switched off of the same DataConnect plan she had to a cheaper MediaNet plan. It's only $15 a month, but my limit was cut to 2Gb.

Including the overage charges. As I recall, the limits and fees were even in block letters on the contract so you couldn't claim ignorance. It sounds to me like she didn't read the contract.

That said, the overage charges were a bit outrageous...the order of 50 cents a megabyte. She apparently went over her limit by about 10 gigs.

I hope they rot in hell. or broken up, yet again.

I sell teh DataCaonnect plan sometimes and have never seen anyone go over that. The way it is explained to us is a person would have to either use their computer as a server for a wireless network that multiple computers used. Or it could happen if you download full movies or leave your Limewire on constantly with people downloading from you and you them. Im not defending AT&T, it has some fucked up policies and terms but they all do, this is a mean time job while my wife finishes grad school so Im not a die hard but all carriers limit their data useage to 5Gb.