Judge Awards iPhone User $850 In Throttling Case

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Ugh oh, I think AT&T could be in serious trouble if everyone sued the company like this guy did. Sure $850 isn't much but, just imagine what would happen if everyone sued.

Pro-tem Judge Russell Nadel found in favor of Spaccarelli in Ventura Superior Court in Simi Valley on Friday, saying it wasn't fair for the company to purposely slow down his iPhone, when it had sold him an "unlimited data" plan.
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AT&T forbids them from consolidating their claims into a class action or taking them to a jury trial.
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*sigh*

The fact that it's legal to have this in a service contract is a sad state of affairs for this country.
 
Ahahhah awarder 850 so he could buy the iphone 4s and renew his contract :p
 
Too bad most of us affected by this are not likely to go to the trouble of suing in small claims court, and AT&T's terms limits class action lawsuits. Maybe if enough people can take the time, money, and effort to sue, the bad PR will finally get AT&T to behave.
 
i bought a 3GB data plan from ATT and i really don't think if I stream pandora all day on my iphone 4 that i'll hit the 3GB cap
 
800XL said:
Too bad most of us affected by this are not likely to go to the trouble of suing in small claims court, and AT&T's terms limits class action lawsuits. Maybe if enough people can take the time, money, and effort to sue, the bad PR will finally get AT&T to behave.
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Most small claims don't cost to much ,maybe a bit for filing.They were designed for,shall we say, people in the lower pay bracket. The good part is AT&T isn't going to be sending their high priced lawyers all over the country or put lawyers from that part of the country on retainer for small claims. Which means most small claims would be won by default. Now if AT&T don't pay up you could take out a lien on some of their properties or what ever you find thats theirs. Have some fun with it.:D
 
This guy need to publish an article outlining what he did and what tactics he used. Then everyone can open the floodgate of SCC claims against AT&T.
 
Just a hunch... But if all the AT&T Unlimited Data plan people REALLY want to enact change I highly suggest you guys create a Facebook page, get this guy to publish how he got the better of AT&T, and then ON THE SAME DAY all file small claims court greviances against AT&T... I think a certain company would suddenly want a class action lawsuit instead. :D

17,000,000 x $850 = $14,450,000,000

Yes people, that is trillion.

Make a stand, make them pay. :cool:
 
Funny thing, if this was a class action he would have gotten $5 and maybe a service credit. The lawyers would have walked with millions.

He was probably better off with SCC.
 
What's unfair about throttling? If both a limited and unlimited option are $30 each, it makes complete sense to start throttling the unlimited option before reaching the data limit of the limited plan. And, how did this guy win in court when his contract says ATT has the right to throttle data? What was the judge's excuse for ignoring the contract? Further, this guy was in violation of the contract because he was tethering.

ATT never advertised "Unlimited at full speed."
 
AT&T really messed up by throttling him at less than a limited account allows. If they had allowed him at least 3.5GB before throttling the judge may well not have ruled in his favor. What a douchebag company.
 
Stone Cold said:
What's unfair about throttling? If both a limited and unlimited option are $30 each, it makes complete sense to start throttling the unlimited option before reaching the data limit of the limited plan. And, how did this guy win in court when his contract says ATT has the right to throttle data? What was the judge's excuse for ignoring the contract? Further, this guy was in violation of the contract because he was tethering.

ATT never advertised "Unlimited at full speed."
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No matter what a contract says, common sense can override it should the judge see fit. If even a ten year old could see that those terms are bullshit, you bet a judge can, too.
 
Slightly related--i switched internet from comcast to a local cable provider who piggybacks on click network. I bought their "unlimited plan" and was called and told to stop streaming so much or they'd shut off my service. Between online backups and netflix, i guess we were pushing the limits. Are they liable for being sued like at&t here? i was pretty pissed getting that call after i'd purchased an "unlimited" service.
 
fattypants said:
No matter what a contract says, common sense can override it should the judge see fit. If even a ten year old could see that those terms are bullshit, you bet a judge can, too.
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If I see two data plans next to each other for the same price, there's no BS about expecting the "unlimited" to be slower than the "limited." And, there's no BS in offering "unlimited" without allowing tethering. This judge is probably 70-years-old and knows less about modern technology than a ten-year-old. As for some of you in this forum who disagree with me, there's a strong anti-corporate bias here.

The small claims verdict will be overthrown on appeal.
 
Stone Cold said:
If I see two data plans next to each other for the same price, there's no BS about expecting the "unlimited" to be slower than the "limited." And, there's no BS in offering "unlimited" without allowing tethering. This judge is probably 70-years-old and knows less about modern technology than a ten-year-old. As for some of you in this forum who disagree with me, there's a strong anti-corporate bias here.

The small claims verdict will be overthrown on appeal.
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I think you are trying to be cute here and argue devil's advocate but you are missing a few key details.

1) AT&T no longer offers an unlimited plan; when they did, there were no tiered plans, so your option was pretty much the $30 unlimited or an incredibly small data package that no one got.

2) The tiered plans were rolled out after the unlimited plans, so comparing 2007's $30 unlimited plan with 2012's $30 3GB plan isn't really accurate. They were never offered at the same time.

So the issue here is that they sold him a $30 "unlimited" plan, and now that their network is stressed, they would rather try to weasel out of those contracts and hoard the cash rather than spending the money to simply upgrade the infrastructure. If you read the article, they are throttling customers to speeds so slow that the web is basically unusable - much worse than T-Mobile and Verizon.

These types of practices shouldn't be allowed. Retroactively modifying their contract at a later date because it's convenient for them is bullshit.
 
Can't AT&T just say that they'll slow the unlimited data plan in their contracts? Technically AT&T isn't putting a data limit, just a bandwidth limit. While I disagree, it's not against "unlimited data"

Chockomonkey...... I hope you go over, and get pissed and sue the crap out of them and win a tremendous victory. Because that's bullshit. Even with this case here, that one there is definitely not "unlimited." You should, theoretically, have a greater chance of winning.
 
OH! I remember now... if the name was the only problem, then Congress should be sued too for all of these misnamed bills.
 
If their data network is so overburdened that they have to resort to throttling, why don't they stop offering service to new data customers until they upgrade the infrastructure?
 
The guy said it wasn't about the money, and besides a class action lawsuit would have gotten a lot less and the lawyers would have walked off with most of the settlement.

AT&T is being an ass using throttling as a threat to make people "upgrade" to newer plans. I wonder how many customers/potential customers they will lose now that it's into the mainstream news.
 
This will only get worse with more and more 4g phones. Heck he was only using a 3g phone.

Sue them all!
 
17,000,000 x $850 = $14,450,000,000

Yes people, that is trillion.

Make a stand, make them pay. :cool:
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LOL. Hundreds... Thousands...Millions... Trillions... Billions...

Of course! This means that our national debt is not really as bad as we think it is! :D
 
Loudspeaker said:
Just a hunch... But if all the AT&T Unlimited Data plan people REALLY want to enact change I highly suggest you guys create a Facebook page, get this guy to publish how he got the better of AT&T, and then ON THE SAME DAY all file small claims court greviances against AT&T... I think a certain company would suddenly want a class action lawsuit instead. :D

17,000,000 x $850 = $14,450,000,000

Yes people, that is trillion.

Make a stand, make them pay. :cool:
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That's only $14.5 billion, which is how much revenue AT&T pulls down every 41 days on average. It's about 13 months of AT&T's net profits, too.
 
That's not to say it won't sting them. They also have to deal with 17 million lawsuits, which might run them $2000 apiece to pay their lawyers...you might be on to something here. It could potentially drain 3 years' worth of profits.
 
Stone Cold said:
What's unfair about throttling? If both a limited and unlimited option are $30 each, it makes complete sense to start throttling the unlimited option before reaching the data limit of the limited plan. And, how did this guy win in court when his contract says ATT has the right to throttle data? What was the judge's excuse for ignoring the contract? Further, this guy was in violation of the contract because he was tethering.

ATT never advertised "Unlimited at full speed."
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guess you not read the news item then,

how does it make sense to start throttling the unlimited data service 1.5GB before the 3gb data service that is the same price, the unlimited service should have an limit that is at least double(5-6gb) the 3gb data service before Throttling kicks in

really no companly should state unlimited when its not unlimited (still been able to use the service at 4KB/s after throttling is not unlimited looking at you T-mobile i am guess ATT do the same thing)
 
gigatexal said:
i bought a 3GB data plan from ATT and i really don't think if I stream pandora all day on my iphone 4 that i'll hit the 3GB cap
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Well, assuming each song is 4 megabytes similar to what 128kbit rate mp3 would be, that works out to about 800 songs. If songs average 4 minutes. That's 3200 minutes or roughly 55 hours or so. How do you define 'all day'? 55 hours over a month of say 28 days minimum implies about just under 2 hours of listening time a day and you'd go over that 3GB cap.
 
sfsuphysics said:
*sigh*

The fact that it's legal to have this in a service contract is a sad state of affairs for this country.
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Very true, but f this sets a precident, then they could potentially have to pay out more, and people may even get more than $5 out of the deal like often happens in a class action.
 
mynamehere said:
Very true, but f this sets a precident, then they could potentially have to pay out more, and people may even get more than $5 out of the deal like often happens in a class action.
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Exactly :) Lets hope so, ATT used to be a decent wireless company, I'd love to see them get slapped around into saving themselves.
 
likeman said:
guess you not read the news item then,

how does it make sense to start throttling the unlimited data service 1.5GB before the 3gb data service that is the same price, the unlimited service should have an limit that is at least double(5-6gb) the 3gb data service before Throttling kicks in

really no companly should state unlimited when its not unlimited (still been able to use the service at 4KB/s after throttling is not unlimited looking at you T-mobile i am guess ATT do the same thing)
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AT&T could just do the proper thing, and advertise their "Unlimited Plan" as being capped at 3gigs and if you go over your not on the "Unlimited plan" anymore for that month.:D I'm sure they could stick that on their contract in small fonts to be seen only by a microscope.:D
 
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