Upon being accused of switching certain customers from their existing plans to the mandatory monthly wireless data plans, AT&T in an attempt to resolve the issue will pay the federal government a sum of $700,000 as announced by the FCC.
This transfer of customers to the monthly data plans was started by AT&T in November 2009 when first-timers as well as existing subscribers were required to upgrade their phones and switch plans. Though initially AT&T had facilitated existing subscribers to stick to their pay-as-you-go plans in spite of making monthly plans mandatory, investigations into the matter showed that upon replacing phones that were under warranty or relocating, these subscribers were automatically enrolled into the new mandatory monthly plans. FCC started looking into the matter upon receiving a number of complaints from customers, following which, in a press release, the FCC stated that AT&T was willing to refund the extra charges paid by the aggrieved subscribers. These extra charges, depending upon data usage, could be anything between $30 to $25 a month.
This will hopefully set an example that wireless carriers can no longer wrongfully charge their customers, stated Julius Genachowski, Chairman of FCC. AT&T subscribers have been advised to keep a close check on their bills to prevent any problems of a similar sort in the future. Apart from voluntarily paying the U.S. Department of Treasury and individually refunding impacted customers, AT&T is also setting up compliance plans including provision of customer notifications, training their customer care representatives and sending out compliance reports to the FCC from time to time. They are also expected to search their records and identify cases wherein customers have been forcefully switched and initiate the refunding process.
AT&T’s spokesperson, however, claimed that the impacted customers are only about 0.03 percent of its actual customer base and that the company had managed to identify the issue and had taken necessary steps by November 2010 itself, refunding customers who had contacted them. Inspite of already having resolved majority of complaints, as claimed by the company, AT&T is willing to provide a bill-page notice to the impacted customers, offer refunds and allow them to switch to their earlier plans or apply a data block to their phones.
