FTC Opens AT&T Claims Process Stemming From 2019 Lawsuit

The FTC opened a claims process for former AT&T customers who haven’t claimed a refund stemming from the agency's lawsuit against the carrier for misleading consumers about its unlimited data plans, it said Thursday. Former AT&T customers may be eligible to claim a refund from the $7 million remaining in a $60 million fund created to settle allegations that AT&T charged for unlimited data plans while throttling data speeds, said the agency, citing its 2019 order filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. The FTC’s complaint said AT&T failed to adequately disclose to unlimited data plan customers that if they reached a threshold of data use in a given billing cycle, it would reduce their data speeds to the point that many common mobile phone applications, such as web browsing and video streaming, “became difficult or nearly impossible to use.” As part of the settlement, AT&T is prohibited from making any representation about the speed or amount of its mobile data without disclosing “material restrictions on the speed or amount of data,” and the disclosures need to be “prominent, not buried in fine print or hidden behind hyperlinks.”