Apple, AT&T settle 'bait and switch' iPad 3G data plan lawsuit Apple and AT&T have agreed to a proposed settlement of a class-action lawsuit that may drop forty bucks into your pocket should you have purchased a 3G-enabled iPad before June 7, 2010. The lawsuit, filed on June 9, 2010, accused Apple and AT&T of using bait-and-switch chicanery when selling those iPads, promising unlimited …
as someone pointed out in another forum that I read recently the class action suits is less about rewarding the people suing and more about punishing the organization being sued. The lawyers often do make a bunch of $ but there's no guarantee that they will get paid. from a quick search it seems this suit may of been filed in Feb 2011.
I was part of a class action suit at one point, against IBM for their 75GXP deathstar drives. Though the judge threw me out of the case because I wasn't in California and they wanted to focus on California folks for some reason(maybe made it easier I dunno). Before that I did get copies of the investigative work(internal IBM docs) and it was pretty damming..
If your in a position to fund a lawsuit to go after Apple and AT&T yourself feel free, and reap the rewards...
Yes, because interest rates have been so high the last few years, they might have made $5 on that money!
Considering that an iPad with 3G has a higher resale value than one without, even customers who bought a 3G iPad only for the unlimited data plans that were dumped, they didn't lose anything like $130. Certainly not if they sold it and bought a Wifi only model once they found out they couldn't get an unlimited plan.
The real bait and switch were carriers making people ever think that unlimited data plans were ever going to be viable in the long run. I know people who never turned wifi on their iPhones a few years ago "because I have unlimited data". It is one thing to be able to use as much data as you need, and another to use as much as you possibly can because you have zero incentive to try to reduce usage.
If they sold 300,000 units in that time span, and made 5 dollars each, that is 1.5 million dollars. 1.5 million dollars in 3.5 years can go a long way. I know we are talking about billion dollar companies, but what company wouldn't love to have a free 1.5 million to invest in 3.5 years? According to the I.R.S., there isn't a single one in the U.S.A.
It used to be lawsuits like this made examples for other companies to pay attention to in order to avoid those practices. However, recently I'm feeling these type of examples are becoming free advice to other companies on how to make even more money...or which laws they need changed by their paid politician.
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