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Mar. 4, 2008

Making good on a previous promise, last Friday AT&T agreed in settling a lawsuit, and said it will repay thousands of Florida customers who were charged for services advertised as free.

AT&T also said that the issue is often third-party companies that advertise services such as ringtones and text messages for free, but then customers are surprised to find charges on their monthly bills.

AT&T said that it didn’t charge customers for the downloaded content.

What it did instead was to bill customers for purchasing third-party services. The wireless carrier also said that this is an industry-wide issue and as part of the settlement it has agreed to police such offers and make it clearer what customers are being charged for.

Under the Court settlement, AT&T also agreed to pay the state of Florida $2.5 million and contribute $500,000 toward consumer education on safe Internet use.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said his office received a few hundred complaints about the carrier’s billing practices, and once it began investigations, found that AT&T had received thousands of complaints.

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Source: AT&T.

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