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AT&T Residential Internet Billing Class Action Lawsuit
By Matt O’Donnell
AT&T customers have filed a class action lawsuit against the company to stop its “unlawful practice of systematically overcharging customers for residential Internet service” by promoting plans for $19.95 a month, but then charging them $40 a month for either the entire year or a portion thereof.
“AT&T advertises many promotional plans at reduced rates for residential Internet service and then bills those who sign up for the promotions at the standard higher rates,” claims the AT&T Internet class action lawsuit. “Unfortunately, AT&T has breached its contracts with its customers of AT&T Residential Internet service by failing to live up to the terms offered and accepted.”
The crux of the problem, the class action lawsuit says, stems from AT&T not applying the bill credit within the first two billing cycles and then either not apply the credit at all, thus forcing the consumer to pay the standard rate for the entire duration of the contract, or applying the bill credit for only a portion of the contract duration, thus forcing the consumer to pay the higher standard rate for some of the months.
“As a result, consumers only receive the promotional pricing for 0 to 11 of the first 12 months of service, rather than 12 of the first 12 months, even though they contracted to receive the promotional pricing for 12 of the first 12 months of service,” the class action lawsuit states.
The AT&T Internet plan class action lawsuit is brought on behalf of anyone in the U.S., and a subclass of individuals who live in Illinois, that signed up for a promotional rate plan for residential Internet service with AT&T but were charged the standard rate for all or part of the duration of the promotional rate period between July 26, 2007 and the present. It is seeking economic, monetary, actual, consequential and compensatory damages in addition to other relief for alleged Breach of Contract, Violations of the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, and Unjust Enrichment.
A copy of the AT&T Residential Internet Class Action Lawsuit can be read here.
The case is Richard Sherman v. AT&T, Inc., Case No. 11CH26265, Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois.
Updated August 3rd, 2011
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79 thoughts onAT&T Residential Internet Billing Class Action Lawsuit
I have a bill for $136 for the first 2 months of 6MB DSL that should be 19.99 per month.
File a complaint with the California Public Utilities Commission. Immediately, I was contacted by somebody from their Presidential Executive Customer Care Department. She handled my situation within a few weeks and problem resolved for the past six months. No billing issues… Until today.
Same happened with my account. Cancelled the account and set the date of cancellation out by 5 days. ATT cancelled my account early, then set it to “unrecoverable”. When I called and complained they started a new account without my permission to try to get my internet back up and running. I called another time and was informed of this by an employee and was given 100 in credit and was told the account was cancelled. After 2 months go by, I get a letter in the mail stating I owe for an account that I never signed up for. Today I got a call from collections dept telling me that I owe money and the bill isn’t even past due. When I inquired about this, I was told that they had no idea why it was in collections yet and that I needed to call ATT to find out. I have created and still have the paper trail, recordings, as well as all documentation and account confirmation numbers to corroborate my story. Any suggestions of what to do?
I signed up for service in GA and they have told me lie after lie after lie. Does anyone know if they have a class action lawsuit there? I signed up for the $19.99 and have yet to see that on the bill. It’s been 3 months now.
I called in August 2011 for the service. I was told that if I paid $30 extra then service would be connected sooner rather than later. Lie…Service wasn’t connected until mid September. I was told that I would be given a $100 gift card for the lies/trouble – Lie. That never happened and was told by one rep that they don’t issue gift cards for that reason. I guess they would go broke. I was told that the special rate would appear on the 3rd bill – Lie…The 3rd bill still had the inflated rate.
Basically every time I call them it is something new…Another lie is told…No rep can see the notes from my other calls…I HATE THEM!
AT&T offered me Internet service for $14.95. They later changed it to $19.95 per month. However, they have never billed me at that rate. My monthly Internet bills from AT&T are all different and way over the amount we agreed upon. I have spent approximately 12 hous on the phone trying to straighten this out. Everyone tells me it’s resolved. One employee said I owed $11.00 since I overpaid the bill by $100.00 to restore service. Another very rude employee said my rate is $29.99/month & that there was never an offer of $14.95/month and that I owed $49.00. One told me the first bill is always $65.00 for the first month & that I was informed of this fact. However, I was never told such a thing. The bills never reflect these amounts they claim I owe & are usually over $200.00. I do not know what to do about this situation. AT&T is going to ruin my credit rating. I would like to join the class action suit.
Oh and YES my fiance and I want to be a part of this lawsuit!!!! Please send info to my e-mail about it. We quickly learned to keep notes and write down all the information we could every month…might be missing some details but we have been preparing for this!
then you have to be on the phone at an at&t store for another hour just to get them to e-mail you a shipping label. they only give you ten days to figure all this out, so if you have a job and no internet it’s quite an accomplishment to get it done on time. oh and did i mention my final bill from my other address is $125? they are charging me $100 for a modem i already paid for after they told me it was free to begin with!!!!!! never again will i do business with this company for anything…just being near that company, store, ad, anything, raises my blood pressure. and this is the short version of the story….my fiance almost made an at&t halloween costume!
… but eventually gave us a credit. however we still paid much more than we should have. Also, we moved recently and tried to hook up new internet there with them since we had no way to look up a different service. THEY COULD NEVER FIGURE OUT HOW TO HOOK US UP WITH INTERNET! (after 6 hours on the phone with them over a three day period) they wanted to send a technician out and charge us $100 for him to take a look when it was their problem. they also just sent me a bill for $117.25. on this bill they are charging me much more than the promotional rate they quoted me with. I have already canceled that account within the first 30 days of ordering it and was told i would not be charged anything. Trying to send back modems is a headache also as they tell you to go to ups when you are supposed to go to usps and they don’t send a shipping label!
My fiance and I signed up with at&t last year for 14.95/ mth. were told we would get a free modem and 100 dollar visa gift card. within the first 3 months we paid $180.00 we never got a free modem and after we called and fought with them we finally got a 75 dollar visa card. EVERY MONTH WE HAVE CALLED THEM AND ARGUED WITH THEM OVER OUR BILL. Every phone call we make to that company they tell us something different. The employees have no idea what they are talking about. they never corrected our bill…
I believe i join this suit early last year or this year ,but i did receive a ltter and i,ve heard nothing since,my address has change and so has my email .