AT&T Wire Fee Fraud Class Action Lawsuit

A federal class action lawsuit claims AT&T (T) rips off customers with bogus charges for a wire protection plan they don’t need and can’t use.

The main plaintiff in the AT&T class action lawsuit claims she is billed $9.99 every month for an “Inside Wire Protection Plan” even though she rents an apartment and the landlord owns her building’s interior telephone wires, which she has no legal responsibility for maintaining.

The AT&T wire fraud class action claims thousands of AT&T customers nationwide are billed for the same bogus plans, which are known by such names as “Wire Pro,” “Inside Wire Maintenance,” and “Home Wire Protection.”

“AT&T is illegally charging many of its land line customers who live in multi-tenant facilities for unnecessary wire insurance,” said the attorney representing the class. “The company knows from prior litigation and its own internal investigations that this charge is improper, yet it continues to charge building tenants like [the plaintiff] for these worthless plans through deceptive sales actions that defraud and rob them of their hard-earned financial resources.”

The prior litigation the attorney is referring to is a Court-approved settlement AT&T reached seven years ago in California that challenged the company’s assessment of wire protection fees to multi-unit apartment dwellers like the ones represented by this class action.

“The company has been on notice since at least 2004 and probably earlier that it is improper to charge tenants of multi-unit buildings these fees.”

The AT&T wire protection fee class action lawsuit is seeking for the certification of two classes: a North Carolina class and a nationwide class, each comprised of all residents of residential or commercial property who had an AT&T account at any time in the past four years and were not responsible for the maintenance of their residence’s interior wire, but were charged a fee for an Inside Wire plan.

It is asking for at least $10 million in damages for AT&T customers.