Washington, DC: T-Mobile is facing a lawsuit in California over allegations that they put limits on their unlimited data plan once customers are locked into a contract.
The suit, brought in Superior Court in Yolo County, says that advertisements for T-Mobile's "Unlimited Web & E-mail" plans, offered for both Blackberry and other brands of smartphones, promise the consumer access to an "unlimited" amount of data. The plans offer a discount on new phones if consumers agree to sign a contract.
The lead plaintiff in the suit, Trent Alvarez, claims he bought two smartphones in 2009 and signed a two year contract for each phone. Those plans, he alleges, were sold to him as unlimited data plans. However, in May 2010, Alvarez received a text message stating "Your data usage in this billing cycle has exceeded 10GB; Data throughput [speed] for the remainder of the cycle may be reduced to 50kbps or less." Alvarez claims that this renders his phones "essentially useless for anything other than making or receiving phone calls and text messages."
Further, the suit claims that the only warning given to consumers is a statement "on the very last page of [a T-Mobile] brochure, buried in minuscule type barely readable, [that] 'Your data session may be slowed, suspended, terminated, or restricted if you use your service in a way that interferes with or impacts our network or ability to provide quality service to other users '"
