I sent them a certified letter saying I did not agree to this change in our contract and sure enough, on my bill this month it stated that my contract is changed and I cannot sue AT&T.

I've sent them a copy of the April 14 letter and a note explaining to them you can't change a contract unless both parties agree--and that I do NOT agree.

AT&T is pulling some shady crap and I don't trust them one bit. Soon I expect that I will need to start hunting for a lawyer.

I this case, I think there's plenty of blame to go around. Radioshack should have disclosed the limit (it's hinted at, and they put the burden on salesfolk to inform the customer), ATT should have notified them more clearly, and the customer should have been more attentive to said notifications.

Just my 2 cents.

She may have racked up the $5K bill with more than just a NetBook...

NetGear makes a "3G Wireless Router" that sells for around $120 at most major electronics stores and web retailers. Instead of connecting to a DSL or cable modem, you insert your USB 3G card into a router capable handling 150MB/second WiFi signals plus up to four 10/100 wired ethernet ports.

Anyone who buys one of these to cut out the expense of DSL or Cable will be in for a rude awakening. Comcast has set a limit of 250GB on its $60/month home Internet service. In contrast, if someone was able to download 250GB in a month using the AT&T 3G card, the "overage" charge would amount to $117,600!

Now, I had been without internet for weeks, so I had a lot of email to catch up on. And I was streaming last.fm while I did it. I also watched some stuff on Hulu, as my landlord had forgotten to get my gas tank refilled and I was without heat, bundled in my room by the space heater (my room is smaller than the living room, and therefore easier to heat. So, no tv, stereo, or the like). I was only supposed to have the aircard as a temp solution while A&T got their heads out of their butts and managed to get my DSL installed (which is another story altogether). While I was in the store, no one told me that there was a data limit. No one told me that my billing cycle on a brand new contract was ending the next day, and therefore my data limit was prorated... nothing. Nor was any of that in my contract (I looked AFTER i got the bill.. yes, I'm an idiot). I called, they knocked the $900 down to $120. Again, this is for 24 hours of ownership of the damn thing, not usage. It should have been, at most, $60. My next bill was something like $3000... which was also knocked down to $150. Still a stupid amount of cash to pay for a grand total of about 6 gigs of transfer over a 2 week period.

@Jaxtrax: OH HAI THAR

It sounds like she kept her 3G card in her laptop or desktop at all times. She may not have torrented or streamed because you keep sending/receiving info when idle.

The information is disclosed in the contract that the plan is a 5GB limit plan. However, past experience has shown that Radio Shack has a hard time disclosing the info and states the 5GB limit is "unlimited" as some people can't simply fathom that someone would use the internet on a laptop that much in a month.

Also, at&t has been sending emails and letters out to people who have an aircard reminding of the 5GB limit as this became a HUGE issue for them in the past few months. So, at&t's butts are covered. The customer won't end up paying anything for the overage, and I seriously doubt this will go anywhere in the legal system.

$480 is a fantastic deal! :)

She could have easily petered out 5GB in a month if she did much streaming from Netflix or Hulu. Even in an EVDO Rev A coverage area I make sure to stay away from streaming video on my Sprint Card. When I'm at home its no big deal since the 1xRTT service is slower than dial-up at times.

My Sprint Card is really for me to use when on the road and when I'm in a hotel run by tossers that charge extra for Wi-Fi.

@OMAC:

I think personal responsibility outweighs corporate in this situation. A contract that outlines in the SIMPLEST of terms what the standard data connect fee is and what the overage is as well is handed to the consumer to READ and then sign.

Contracts really fall on the lap of the consumer. As others have said, this woman was savvy enough to update programs and use a substantial amount of data over the 5GB soft-cap, but shouldn't be held responsible when her bill comes in.

Chances are she just signed the contract without even looking at it because she wanted to get home to play with her new netbook. I've seen it before. I've been in similar situations before.

Something will get settled in the consumers favor, but I believe that everyone should always read your entire contract before signing it. They are lawful and binding.

AT&T shouldn't have to watch your every move if you use their service. Read the contract and follow the rules.

How many things can you do with a 5GB cap? I think we could use a comparison.

Text messages, music downloads, etc. How many?

@wellfleet: I'll give you that. yes, for an aircard you can see how much data is being transferred. i have one but never need to check. However I have comcast at home with 3 other roomates. Comcast also wants to provide a cap before shutting off service or making slower etc. I don't see any way of telling what my apt transferred during any given month yet comcast still wants to set this cap.

You, and Radio Shack, are driving down the second road. That you don't see this is a large part of Radio Shack's problem.

Can't wait to get my 3G connection up and running so I can blow that 5GB cap out the water.

.....Or like an analogy that stretched thinner than a moose at an anorexic rubber band convention.....

That amount $.0159 sounds about right for data costs/kB on most providers. In the right ballpark, I mean.

So $.0159 * 1,000,000 (gig = 1,000,000 kilo) = $159.00.

Then how in the hell are they billing $480 / gB?

You didn't create it, but you are defending it! :) I know that the contracts are created by the accountants and lawyers, and the average retail rep doesn't know what's in each contract. I would also guess that the average retail rep doesn't know the difference between a kB and a kb, which adds to the confusion.

All I am trying to get across is that if AT&T used the same terminology throughout its contract that there would be a drastic reduction in problems, but they go out of their way to make it difficult for the consumer.

additional oddity: in the event that you have to use the restore partition, they also include a copy of this app in the box - on a CD. Which does zero good for a system without an optical drive.

@Hooray4Zoidberg:

I am well aware that 5GB is a low cap,given that 5 itunes movie downloads will pass it. However, this woman didnt just eke past the cap, she blew waaaaayyy past the limit.Typically these matters are resolved with a phone call to AT&T or a RS district office:ususally a typical step before litigation.

But no, she went straight to court accusing fraud-even though she signed the contract that stipulated what the cap was.

@OMAC:

I'm not hiding behind anything.You seem to understand very well what the concept of 'overage fees' mean , and I hope you understand the common sense wisdom of reading a binding contract before signing it.

And let me be clear-I didnt create the contract, nor set the price for either the aircard or the overage charges.If you have issue with that, talk to AT&T.

There is no reason this should ever happen, AT&T clearly knows how much bandwith is being used because they're charging for it, they could just as easily cap it, or even simply email the user when they're approaching it.

@Silversmok3:
There are a lot of legitimate ways to exceed 5GB on a machine with the specs you listed. A lot of people use 3g to work remoteley a simple VPN or remote desktop connection to her office could run that up easily in a month.

However, it is true that the average person, when asked, will say, "I don't do that much on the internet; I don't even download" even if they are watching Youtube for most of the day.

Sounds fair, huh.

@invisiblenemies:

I almost agreed that she should, but having thought about it a moment I don't. I watch little video from the Internet but by and large unless I'm explicitly downloading and saving the content to my hard drive I don't see much mention of files sizes and such.

With all the different players, different codecs, different bitrates, and the varied responsiveness and transfer speeds from the sites at different times of days a person can't tell, much beyond a guess (or a general idea as I become more educated or experienced), how big a transfer a particular video involves.

I've downloaded 200MB videos that last 10 minutes and are encoded so poorly as to be unwatchable, even by 10-15 year old standards. Then again I've downloaded 20MB videos that look far better than my tv. One day, one site, and a 20MB video might download in five minutes for me. Same day, another site, and that 20MB video might take 2 hours. If all they have is a "buffering" prompt rather than a byte count how would a person be expected to know that one copy isn't 24 times as large (or as small).

There is personal responsibility and there is Corporate responsibility. Where is the Corporate responsibility in this? You shout to the world that 5GB only costs $60/Month via in-store signs and pamphlets. Where are the signs that tell people that 6GB of data is going to run them $540? You BURY them in the fine print and hide behind numbers and letters that the average person cannot comprehend. Why sell the plan at 5GB and then put the overages in another format? It's because you hope that the customer is ignorant and doesn't do the math.

Stop blaming the customer and put the blame where it belongs. When AT&T and Radio Shack start showing the real cost of these plans in Gigabytes and Dollars then you can shift the blame to the consumer.

Don't hide behind the fine print. It's unprofessional.

@ScottRose: I can remember when AT&T was rolling out their "unlimited data plans". I was working for them at the time. Turns out, the 5gb cap was a "soft limit" meaning that once you hit 5gb, AT&T would monitor your usage to determine if you needed to be shut off for massive downloads and streams, or if AT&T needed to come up with higher usage plans.

Of course, that's what we were fed to inform customers about at the time. Don't know how much of it is actually true.

I also know that if the plans have been changed to the 5gb being a cap, any overages would be something like .0159 cents per kb, which could really add up. Now, that may have changed since I worked at AT&T, but even then, it was a ridiculous amount for data.

@Trai_Dep:
Theres blaming the victim-and then theres personal responsibility.

What happened to reading the fine print?
Id imagine that when promted to sign something, its common sense to read the document before affixing your signature.
Yes AT&T's overage rates are punitive-as are credit card late fees, mortage interest adjustments, and sneaky rebates.I dont see why we should pay taxpayer dollars hearing the case of someone who didnt read the fine print of what she signed, and wants a handout because of it.

Installing the Steam client on any PC could cause you to download much more than the 5GB cap allows. I probably have 30GB worth of Steam games on my desktop. I don't think for a minute that they would all run on a netbook, but older games might be able to work on a netbook.

Also, it's not really a data cap. A data cap implies that you have a 5GB download limit. This is not the case since they just charge you WAY more for anything over 5GB.

IMO if ATT didn't/doesn't provide a consistent "bytes-ometer" that is plainly visible to the consumer, nor any warning that they reached their 5gB limit, then I'm at 70% ATT's fault/30% consumer's fault. Data is different than cell phone minutes (as far as monitoring goes) because the average person can identify that "this call has been going on forever". Whereas it's much harder to identify that "this video is compressed poorly and has been sucking down tons of bandwidth in these past 25 minutes".

When I signed up for my VZW data plan, I read those data-usage terms very carefully. And I was also appalled that they advertised the plan as "unlimited", but then had an obvious 5gB limit in the text of the agreement.

The difference is that VZW's language stated that they had the option to shut off my service if I hit 5gB, not charge me thousands of dollars. Which in the end I'm OK with because I used my data plan for the commute on the train and only hit 800mB on my worst month.

Anyone know if this absurd charge is unique to ATT, or do the other guys do it too?

I'd wager on a crushing Hulu or YouTube addiction. Maybe even Slingbox like that other post from last week (too lazy to link).

@failurate:

On netbooks, doutful. Using ATT's software... only per session. Not total.

@pmcpa2:

About the only thing I use my data card for anymore is to send and recieve text messages.

@Corporate_guy: I made no effort to defend the rates that AT&T charges for overages. Personally, I would never sign a contract with AT&T for anything. I just don't see how a consumer that fails to learn any terminology referenced in a contract justifies a class action lawsuit.

Do you have to be an tech wizard to do any of these things?

She's upset (rightly so) that she's paying 480$ per GB after her first 5. It should be clearly stated in the contract that this is the price for overage *in the same way the rest of the pricing is outlined*. Meaning 480$ per gig, clearly stated.

@WaywardSoul: It doesn't require loads of knowledge, no. BUT, she should still understand the basics of data transfer.

I can only hope that a family member is dl'ing porn. That would really spice up the conversation.

@Jakuub: I don't think it's necessarily savvy - but I think you're overestimating the general public's use of online services.

Sigh... Tb != TB

So, because some consumers don't understand what their contract means, I should only be limited to buying $200 worth of data?

I completely agree that it would be nice for AT&T to provide a pop-up, but their failure to do so in no way excuses this woman from the contract that she signed.

What the app does *not* have is any sort of consistent data counter-it only shows what you've used in that particular session. Doubled with AT&T's site not reporting data usage in a timely manner, and it's easy to go over the limit. I returned mine within the 30-day trial period and was only stuck with the activation fee and a pro-rated monthly charge.

@joshua70448:
Heres whats fishy to me.

Her case is based on the assumption that she believed she had unlimited data, and did not understand that she'd be charged an overage.

Which doesn't fly when you look at her usage, which you cant run up from IMs and email alone.She's tech savvy enough to rack up a $5000 overage bill, but doesnt understand what a data cap is or how to read a cell phone contract?

And she gets exactly zero sympathy if she was using her Acer as a P2P exchange system,which youd almost have to use to explain so much usage.

When did transferring a lot of data on the internet become shady?

Isn't transferring data the purpose of the internet?

Lets start chastising people for using a tool effectively.

Yes, we do send text messages warning you at 3GB, 4GB, and at 5GB, and they are received on a PC.

How this woman exceeded it, and that other guy who watched a football game? Maintaining a constant connection with out ever disconnecting from our service. Regardless though, our data feature is even clearly labeled with "5GB" in the title. How this woman can plead ignorance is beyond me.

If I sound harsh, I apologize, but customers just need to be smarter. You can check your usage right from your online account for crying out loud!

8$ for the 1st 5 Gallons.

0.00475561$ for each ml after that. Bargain eh?

So what if 0.00475561/ml is 18$/Gallon. Customer should know this stuff. Oh and I will bill you a month later after you've been using my pump the whole month.

I don't expect you to be upset and want to switch over to a new service.

@invisiblenemies:

Actually, it doesn't suggest any such thing. Maybe she's using her laptop to watch movies online. That doesn't require much knowledge. Maybe a family member is using it to download porn or she has a kid that sits on youtube watching videos all day.

I don't get it either. Why is it so damn expensive? $480? That's crazy.

How do you explain 5GB to a lay consumer in such a manner that both parties are fully informed and can thus enter into a legally binding agreement? I don't think you can unless the netbook has a popup window that informs the user about the data used in the billing period -- and disables the connection until "OK" is pressed at certain user-configurable marks like 80% and 100%. After 100%, a dollar amount should be displayed in some fashion so the user actually knows what's happening.

I never know what bandwidth I'm using, and I'm a pretty technical computer user. I can't expect my mother to have any clue. If she got a bill for $100 of overage fees, she'd be livid and I think she'd have a reason for it.

@Silversmok3:

@joshua70448:

Remember, this is a 1gb RAM netbook-not a gaming machine or a media desktop computer.I ask anyone interested in buying these computers exactly how they plan to use it, and I make it clear theres a 5GB cap.No customer ive sold these to ever complained to me that it wasnt enough.

Now, lets come back to the case at hand. She's alleging that ATT/Radioshack defrauded her into running up a $5000 bill.For one, she signed a 2 year contract specifying the 5gb cap, and the consequences if she passes that. To add, the ATT software specifies the exact airtime useage, so she cant say she had no clue she passed 5gb.

We sit here and condemn mortgage borrowers for not reading the terms of their loan contract, but give a pass to a lady who does the same thing? Granted its over a computer, but reading what you sign is reading what you sign. By not reading and signing anyways, youve only got the face in the mirror to blame if shit hits the fan.

If there rates are going to be that exorbitant, they need to disclose the per gigabyte cost up front and set it so you get a popup warning when you hit the 5gb limit. And give you the ability to set it to shut off when it hits the limit.

@RonDiaz: The connection is intended to be used for light internet/corporate intranet via VPN. The reason it is targeted at that market is because it is a high-cost luxery/business service. It isn't something the average consumer would need. It is for checking email and agendas while waiting for your flight and the like. As such, I think the service itself is not over-priced, and very little fault along that line should fall on ATT. What fault they deserve is in their marketing department that thought this was a good match to make with Radio Shack. A subsidized $100 netbook is targeted at a market that is decidedly not luxery/business. This is not to say that those markets don't look for good deals, just that a retail Radio Shack store (an assumption on my part, could easily have been online or via the phone, but the point stands) is not their first stop when looking for equipment. Quite simply, this offered deal is targeted at a demographic that the service is not suitable for. I'd split this blame as 60% to Radio Shack, 30% ATT, and 10% consumer. It appears that nobody did their due diligence in this case, but some may even have actively avoided it.

Try to read the terms and services.

How can these companies provide a limit and not give users a way to monitor it? It's like cell phones not giving you a way to check how many minutes you used and then charging you for going over? is that how cell phones used to have it until there was a class action lawsuit? i bet if you call AT&T or comcast or whoever and ask them how much you used because you don't want to go over, they probably won't or can't even tell you.

If she was transferring 10GB of data in a month, she certainly has at least above average knowledge of technology. You don't accidentally double your allotted data amount by sending emails and reading consumerist.

For 10GB/month, you can send 3.4 million emails assuming each email is 1 text page w/o attachments at approx 3 KB. Or you could view about 70,000 web pages at approx 150 KB. Or view 21,000 low res pics at 500KB/each.

Any other usage would indicate she does have some sort of above average internet experience - therefore, she should understand how data transfer works.

@Tito151: and to build off that analogy about leasing the car, it's like the lease contract saying 10K miles in the contract without specifically telling you, giving you a car without an odometer, and then giving you a huge charge because they tracked the car by GPS and SAY you went over.

So using legitimate, if bandwidth intensive software is "something shady" now? Ever heard of Steam? I could kick off over 20gb of downloads on a given computer just by signing in and wanting to play some games (not even play them online). Ditto for multitudes of other services that deliver content via the internet. Not to mention that you can download legitimate stuff from BT as well - Linux distros, music the artists WANT shared, legal documents, etc.

@Silversmok3: No, that's like GM selling you a charging plan for your new super duper electic vehicle. They sell you on a cost of only $2 per day, presuming an average usage of X watts per hour, which they equate with 50km of driving.

Of course, you're an average US car buyer, you don't understand watts and you don't really know kilometers because we use miles, plus you drive in real life conditions - all times of day, night, and all traffic conditions - and you don't grasp how much each affects power usage. Their estimate, on the other hand, is based on very strict and limited testing conditions that only exist in fantasy test courses where they use no lights or wipers or radios and only accelerate once in that 50km of driving.

Then, after your first month of usage, where you enjoy zipping around in your new electric car so much, they bill you not an average of $2 per day but $180 per day and feel they can get away with it because 1) the rate is buried in the fine print 2) it "couldn't have been" glossed over by the salesman because salesmen are honest 3) The average consumer should be perfectly capable of reading and understand all the technical details that it took their engineers and lawyers and salesmen so much effort to obfuscate so completely.

There's one reason and one reason only for such charges and that's to take advantage of consumers. They could easily cut them off, throttle them, warn them, or have more reasonable and even graduated charges for additional GB of usage. Twice the usage of a plentiful resource should not cost 80 times as much.

1. i get a text message from my provider at 80% of my wireless data limit

2. I get a second message at 100% of my monthly data limit.

so if i go over its totally my fault for being stupid

Full disclosure: I used to work for RadioShack, where I my job description was basically "whore these cell phones and data plans, oh yeah, guys might come in here asking about TVs and cables and parts and crap, they're over there in the back of the store".

I cannot speak for everyone at Radioshack, because they are commissioned sales people. With any commisioned position, there is quite a bit of room for sleeze bags, but also quite a bit of room for really good people who are passionate about technology. So, while I was sure to mention and detail overage charges for data plans, some may not have been, since cell phone sales/data plans are usually the bulk of a person's salary.

However, if they were not told by the sales person, the documents that were signed are honestly pretty vague, and tell you more about the phones features than the details of the contract. I often wondered how it can possibly legally bind you to an agreement, as there are very very few contract details presented.

The point is that failing to read a contract should not result in a $5000 penalty-- if these companies are going to charge fees like this there should be a dinger that goes off and a big pop up box that says WARNING: YOU HAVE EXCEEDED USAGE, YOU ARE BEING CHARGED...

Better yet- law should be they can't charge you more than the price of the plan would have been that would have allowed such usage-- so $200 instead of $5000- much more reasonable.

She must have terrific coverage. I mean what does 3G do for speed? I could see if she went home and went via Wi-Fi or or ethernet to d/l that much in a month...

Ohhh.. I think I know what happened.

Perhaps she was d/l'ing things at home through her 3G instead of her broadband (wired/wireless) connection... Ok, that I can see.

@Joewithay: That's deceit in itself, in my mind. Not many people understand the difference between a kilobyte, megabyte, or a gigabyte. Some people just want internet and the sales person says "Oh, there's no way you'll go over 5 gigs!"

@OMAC: My satellite internet does that. If you go over your monthly allotment, it'll sloooowwww yyyyoouuu down. I've never come close but I've heard of the horror from my father.

It's a pretty effective tool. He's getting verizon DSL.

Not a bad slogan. Maybe I'll pitch that to TPB.

Likewise, if anyone remembers, AT&T did advertise their service as Unlimited.

I sell these at Radioshack,so allow me to clear the air a bit.

The data cap is disclosed in the contract you sign in the store.Since its a part of the agreement to get the aircard in the first place,its her basic responsibilty to read before she signs.

The netbook in question is an Acer that runs XP,with data handled via an ATT connection client.The client will tell you to the KB exactly what data you have transmitted that session,as well as lifetime transfer info.Without the client window being open there can be no active ATT connection.

To add,maybe its just common sense to not download terabits of data on a laptop with 250 GB of hard disk space.To exceed the cap the way this lady has,she had to be doing something shady-unless she was slingboxing 24-7 over the 30 day billing period.

This is a fraud on her part-shes wasting time when there are honest cases of corporate fraud happening right and left.And did she inform the sales associate that shed be downloading hundreds of gigs of data a month?

I'm wondering if Billie was deliberately mislead or if she just failed to read the contract. I find it hard to believe that ATT wouldn't include information concerning the 5gb cap and overages in any of the paperwork.

I hope that some future legislation forces these companies to have the consumer opt in to a status alert when they approach 90% of an agreed spending limit. (whatever happened to those? I used to get them before, but not in some years now)

There is no reason for AT&T to charge that much for their service. If they don't want people going over a certain limit because of bandwidth limitations, then they should cut people off. But then again, it's more lucrative this way.

The only way I can see this woman using torrents is if she had someone set up a client software like Vuze or something for her, and she got into watching and downloading a lot of crap. But barring that, if she didn't really ask the right questions or whatever when she bought the netbook, I doubt she is savvy enough to be into downloading movies or torrents otherwise.

Besides, what kind of 3G speeds is she getting if she's able to download torrents at any decent speed? Even with my wi-fi connection, I sometimes cringe at how long it takes to download sizable torrents.

I hate to break it to the staff writing, but 5gb over the course of a month isnt very much at all... Just 166mb per day.. or 20mb per hour in an 8 hour day.. maybe she uses it for work? Vpn? Who knows..

Since it was a new Netbook, odds are there are a bevy of Drivers and Updates that will stream to the machine over the course of the first month. Any software package downloads are going to hit her too.

A small ammount of time on Youtube, a net radio station, or heaven forbid, netflix would easily overwhelm the connection.

This woman is on crack.How the hell can you run up a $5000 overage ,and have the gross irresponsibility to blame the seller for it?That's like me getting a ticket for 50 over ,then suing GM for making a car capable of 100 MPH.

I still have to say, why is it AT&T's fault for telling the customer what they are doing? I believe the software that gets installed on your PC shows transfer amounts at the top of your screen.

Somebody obviously misled her in the sales process. If you had any clue about how download limits work and what that effectively means for P2P stuff, you wouldn't have agreed to Satan's data plan.