AT&T Says Being Misleading About 'Unlimited' Data Plans Was Ok, Because Reporters Told Consumers It Was Being Misleading
from the ill-communication dept
Back 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, including at one point trying to claim that the very same net neutrality and FCC Title II rules AT&T was attempting to kill, prevented the FTC from holding it accountable.
Nearly a decade after the battle began, the company agreed last fall to a $60 million settlement with the FTC without actually admitting any wrongdoing. Though AT&T has also been attempting to tap dance around several other lawsuits over its not really "unlimited" data plans with varying success. A separate 2015 class action continues to stumble through the court system, and AT&T lawyers continue to engage in... creative efforts to derail it.
The California class action argues, among other things, that AT&T was being secretive when it downplayed the hidden restrictions on its unlimited data plans (which is correct). To try and disprove this claim, a recent AT&T filing (pdf), spotted by Stop The Cap, introduces a dozen media reports (including an old one by myself) critical of AT&T's efforts. The logic being that because news outlets were writing about how sleazy AT&T was being, customers couldn't possibly have been surprised by the restrictions on their "unlimited" data plans:
"One of the news articles cited in AT&T’s May 14 filing was written by former DSL Reports’ author Karl Bode, who has been roundly critical of AT&T’s data caps for over a decade. Ironically, AT&T’s defense team is arguing Bode’s report, “AT&T Wages Quiet War on Grandfathered Unlimited Users” offers proof AT&T was not keeping its speed throttling policy “secret,” as at least one plaintiff claimed. Bode suggested AT&T had engineered its speed throttling plan to push grandfathered unlimited data plan customers off the plan in favor of more profitable plans offering a specified data allowance and overlimit fees."
Nifty.
It's not just AT&T that has now spent the better part of the last fifteen years trying to tap dance around their misleading marketing related to unlimited data plans. Verizon had its wrist slapped by New York's Attorney General as early as 2007 for selling "unlimited" data plans with very real limits, and yet the company still to this day imposes all manner of restrictions on such plans. Verizon's most recent unlimited plans, for example, throttle you back to HD and ban 4K video entirely unless you pony up cash for a more expensive plan.
This is by and large acceptable provided Verizon buries its annoying unlimited data plan limits somewhere in its massive EULA.
Still, you'd think that after so many run ins with regulators and consumers, wireless carriers would simply stop using the word "unlimited" entirely, instead focusing on other metrics like speed or reliability. Instead, they keep engaging in the same behavior, AGs and the FTC keep doling out flimsy wrist slaps years after the fact, and telecom lawyers spend years tap dancing around anything even vaguely resembling accountability. And, thanks in large part to AT&T and Verizon lobbyists, we just lobotomized the one government agency custom built to handle these kinds of issues, while also killing net neutrality rules requiring greater transparency in mobile data plans. Good job, America!
Filed Under: 5g, misleading, truth in advertising, wireless
Companies: at&t
