The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said that AT&T has to pay 60 million USD to resolve U.S allegations of misleading smartphone users by reducing the speed in an unlimited data plan if the customers use more data.
AT&T is also restricted from making any representation of the speed and amount of its mobile data without disclosing any material restrictions on the data, this is due to the settlement made in 2014.
AT&T Has To Deposit $60 Million into Partial Refund
To settle the issue, AT&T has to deposit $60 million in a fund that will be used to pay back the “partial refund” to the users who enrolled in the unlimited data plans offered by AT&T before 2011. The company has been completely restricted from advertising its data plans with the speed of the connection and the amount of data without revealing the restriction and terms of users of the plans.
In 2014 FTC filed a complaint against the company, AT&T, of misleading its customers over the unlimited data plans and the amount of data a customer can use without any extra charges. The former FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said in 2014 that,
“AT&T promised its customers ‘unlimited’ data, and in many instances, it has failed to deliver on that promise, the issue here is simple: ‘unlimited’ means unlimited.”
Later in 2015, the FTC imposed a fine of 100 million dollars on AT&T for misleading marketing practices of its data plans. According to the reports of FTC, they received thousands of costumers’ complaints of the data plan issues with AT&T which made them investigate the issue.
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