5 ms·
Pocket change. Cost of doing business. They made way more money by misleading customers and will continue to do so with penalties that small.
by Trias11 7y ago
Pocket change. Cost of doing business.
They made way more money by misleading customers and will continue to do so with penalties that small.
- diminoten 7y agoYeah but like, is it really also not "pocket change" to just actually give "unlimited" service? Or what about the effectiveness of the "unlimited" lie, was that worth spending an extra $60MM on the marketing?
- nathankunicki 7y agoOf course it is, the wholesale cost of data is peanuts comparatively. However there is _more_ money to be made by marking it up and charging $X per GB above an arbitrary cap.
- SN76477 7y agoPocket change is right. How about some real fines?
- OnlineGladiator 7y agoHow much do you think they should be fined?
- pmoriarty 7y agoThey should just double the fine after every violation.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- flyGuyOnTheSly 7y agoA punitive amount.
- SquishyPanda23 7y agoSome multiple larger than one of the estimated amount of money they made by lying.
- dragonwriter 7y agoTriple the amount of money reasonably attributable to the misrepresentation.
- OnlineGladiator 7y agoSo I agree with this idea, but how do you calculate the amount? I'm not asking for a rule, I'm asking someone to calculate me a number for how big AT&T's fine should be.
- dragonwriter 7y agoYou'd have to have the rule going in and have the parties present evidence on the amount attributable in the appropriate phase of the trial. Intuitively, the actual number awarded seems far below the minimum plausible if the treble-gains rule proposed were used, but I'll freely admit I don't have hard data to set what the likely actual damages should be under that rule.
- StanislavPetrov 7y agoTake the gross revenue collected by AT&T for all of the "unlimited" plans that were sold and multiply that by 2.
- deogeo 7y agoThat's not the formula used when copyright violations are involved...
- SN76477 7y agoLOL
- Braggadocious 7y agoA refund for anyone affected and asks for one. At $100/mo, 60 million dollars translates to 25,000 pay periods. AT&T has 25 million subscribers. I think its fair to say they got away with lying here.
- OnlineGladiator 7y ago> At $100/mo, 60 million dollars translates to 25,000 pay periods. AT&T has 25 million subscribers. I am failing to see how these numbers add up. What is the explicit formula you are using?
- monocasa 7y ago24 months at $100/month leads you to 25k subscribers at $60M.
- OnlineGladiator 7y agoThank you. I was doing mental math and I think I was lazily confusing 24 with 25 and noticed my zeros were off and after a few tries decided to just ask. The 24 months explains it. I figured a pay period was a month because I think of it as how often I have to pay.
- brokensegue 7y agothey think a pay period is 24 months (it may be). 60 million / (24mo * $100/mo) = 25,000
- porpoisemonkey 7y agoI'd like to see them make their customers whole by forcing them to refund the monthly payment for every month that a customer with an "unlimited" plan was capped or throttled.
- tw04 7y ago6 months of revenue would probably get the message across without bankrupting them.
- SN76477 7y agoI like this idea of it being a percentage of gross. Make it hurt.
- SN76477 7y agoreturn the money that was taken unfairly from the customer would be a start. And then a sizable fine over that, let’s say an additional 100% These companies need to feel pain for unethical practices. Not a slap on the wrist. Next where does that money for the fine go? It shouldn’t just disappear into the ether. Using the money from the fine perhaps a third party committee should be formed that regularly audits this known exploitive behavior. Maybe 50M could get that off of the ground and moving. That could be 36 months of auditing from a third party. All of this of course isn’t how things work. It’s just what I think is ideal.
- Animats 7y agoYes. AT&T now offers "AT&T Unlimited Starter", "AT&T Unlimited Extra", and "AT&T Unlimited & More Premium". "Available when Stream Saver is turned off. Learn more at att.com/streamsaver. After 15 GB hotspot speed limited to maximum of 128Kbps. Customers may temporarily experience slower speeds during busy times. On AT&T Unlimited & More Premium, if you exceed 22 GB of data on a line in one billing cycle, your speed may be slowed until the end of that billing cycle when the network is congested. All AT&T Unlimited Starter and AT&T Unlimited Extra customers have a limit of 1.5 Mbps (SD quality) when video streaming, and may experience temporarily reduced speeds when the network is congested." The FTC didn't even make them stop using the term "Unlimited".
- shpx 7y ago128Kbps for 1 month is 42GB https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=128Kbps+for+1+month https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=128Kbps+for+1+month
- bashy 7y agoDo they mean kilobits or kilobytes?
- user5994461 7y agoThis has to be bytes, you wouldn't be able to open a website in entire minutes if it were bits.