According to DailyTech, a class action lawsuit has been brought against AT&T over the way the carrier bills its subscribers for data use. The suit alleges that AT&T overstated the amount of data a person uses by as much as 300%. It also claims that AT&T"s billing system is like "the gas pump that charges you for the full gallon, when it only actually pumped nine tenths worth"
One of the plaintiffs, Patrick Hendricks, hired a consulting firm to test the claims over two months. They bought a new iPhone and turned off all of the features that would consume data, such as push notifications, location services and any email syncing. Even still AT&T billed them for roughly 2MB of data use. During the two month study, the firm found AT&T to overstate usage by 7% to 14%, and in some instances up to 300%. For a 50KB page AT&T will bill you for between 53.5KB and 150KB.
The suit claims that while these charges only have "a modest effect" on customer"s bills, they have a huge effect on AT&T"s bottom line. With 92 million customers, AT&T could possibly be falsely inflating its revenues if these charges turn out to be valid.
AT&T is no stranger to lawsuits though. Previously, the company has been sued for charging folks for downloads they never made, for claiming the iPhone had the capability to send SMS and MMS messages and for charging folks for service they either didn"t or couldn"t provide.