No, you assume you can share the 2gb evenly, and it's not its 2gb for one and 2gb for the other (right?).
G
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AT&T Cracking Down on Unauthorized Tethering
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No, you assume you can share the 2gb evenly, and it's not its 2gb for one and 2gb for the other (right?).
G
But that's not what they sold me. They sold me an unlimited phone with eventual tethering (at an assumed extra cost), but they're taking away my unlimited.
We connect them as being similar, but it's not. What if they offered me tethering but took away my unlimited texting?
g
Did you get that in writing? If not, a salesman told you want you wanted to hear to make a sale. Bottom line, you have nothing to stand on.
I wouldn't bother changing your plan yet. If you need to and are willing, you can do so w/o penalty after AT&T sent a notification. Besides, today the 2GB plan still wont officially support tethering anyway.
The iPad question is interesting because there is no iPad data plan which offers tethering. I would guess that despite being able to see your tethering, they would not take action until there is a suitable plan available to switch you to. Just hold tight for now and continue business as usual.
It is a business relationship. It is less about right vs wrong than about legal vs illegal.
That said IMO I also disagree that their actions are greedy, immoral or despicable. They sold a service and clearly defined the rules to use it. Now they want to ensure that the rules are being followed (to the benefit of users who are following the rules in the form of less network congestion).
I don't even have a freaking iPhone dude so spare me the lecture about what you automatically somehow assume I'm doing.
Regardless, what you can and cannot 'easily do' is IRRELEVANT. If you paid for 150GB of data then you are entitled to 150GB of data. And and it's not that hard to DL a lot of data on an iPad, for instance. A computer is a computer. Just because it's smaller doesn't make it fundamentally different. Safari is on an iPhone, an iPad and a Notebook. And I don't think most of these people doing this are running Bit Torrent clients on their tethered connection. Many people just want to check their e-mail on their notebook. I don't see how that entitles AT&T to more money for the same data regardless of whether it's checked with your e-mail on the iPhone, iPad or iMac.
What YOU and others on here REFUSE to acknowledge is that AT&T are unbelievably GREEDY, immoral and despicable for trying to charge people twice for the same data they already paid for.
Some don't see it because they think the greedy rich are always right and that the average hard working person should bow down to the almighty rich people. They believe that the top 5% should control 99% of the wealth and everyone else should just take whatever they're dishing out. They want early fees, late fees, in-between fees, going to the bathroom while on the clock fees, processing fees, handling fees, baggage fees, pillow fees, sitting near an aisle fees, and a surcharge if your socks don't match your shoes fee. If you don't like those fees, you can just go without because you won't get the service without it. You must AGREE to the software terms, no matter how ridiculously unreasonable or return your opened $60 game which the store will NOT take back because it's been opened or pay a 25% 'restocking' fee. Too bad. But no, it's the person who is sick of getting constantly screwed by the system that is in the wrong....
We are talking about unlimited on your phone, not your ipad or your computer, and if you dont have an iphone and are not affected why are you even in this topic?
The only people who iphones crying about this are the people trying to cheat the system.
Do you really want all this people using computers DLing all this data clogging up the 3G network making it slower for everyone?
People already complain about dropped calls on ATT, do you really think they want to hear about people complaining about slow 3g speeds because people are DL torrents on their computers tethered to their phone connection?
Unless it is written in the contract, they aren't "offering" you anything. Verbal contracts get trumped by written ones all the time.
Heck, even if you had recorded the conversation (and we assume that it was legal to do so since laws vary), it would legally meaningless since it never defined what "eventual" referred to. AT&T could easily say that the sales person was speculating and was not able to actually offer it. I am sure that it could be negated since the salesperson isn't able to define such terms - that would be someone else. At the worse, the sales person presents the contract and is not an enforcer.
In other words, not a legal offering.
That's the bottom line. The most you could ever get out of a deceptive sales pitch is a no penalty exit. The contract gets cancelled along with any service obligations to AT&T. You are never going to get a court to enforce a verbal claim like that. The court is going to conclude that the sales person had no way to legitimately offer said claim since AT&T didn't offer it. You cannot force AT&T to provide something it never offered in the first place.
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I have an hour long Apple Keynote with them announcing the iPhone with tethering (coming to American carries soon) explaining that I'd be able to get tethering (at the time they were still giving unlimited data). There was no mention that I'd have to give up my unlimited data.
This was my first iPhone, I was not carrying over an unlimited plan.
Gary
That is great, but they didn't mention in that key note that you would be able to keep your current plan. So, in fact, they have done what they said they would do. They offered you tethering but you had to switch to a new plan.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)
In fact apple has specifically allowed carriers to determine tethering accessibility. They never talked plans - just technical capability. Meaningless when you consider that tethering isn't a unique feature. Given that apple never defined rates or terms means bupkis as far as AT&T is concerned. They don't care.
In fact apple has specifically allowed carriers to determine tethering accessibility. They never talked plans - just technical capability. Meaningless when you consider that tethering isn't a unique feature. Given that apple never defined rates or terms means bupkis as far as AT&T is concerned. They don't care.
FWIW, the exact quote from the keynote was "Like MMS, this requires carrier support, and we have 22 carrier partners in 42 countries around the world that will be supporting this at the launch of iPhone OS 3.0, and more will be rolling it out later."
The term "American carriers" was never mentioned, nor was there any talk of any plan.
If you want to watch it again, skip 45 seconds into this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYjItnvnO40&annotation_id=annotation_823640&feature=iv
Hey Everyone,
I use 3-4 gigs/month on the unlimited plan and I got the text about tethering last week. I was waiting for the email to show up but instead I got a letter from some manager in my state. The letter stated that customers were their number one priority and they were offering 1000 free minutes if I bring that iPhone in to a store so they "can show me all the great features and services that they offer for that phone". (It didn't seem mandatory that I go in.)
This seems like an elaborate ploy to catch me but in a nicer way than the emails that some people had been getting. Have any of you received this? Is it just a coincidence or is something up?
I use 3-4 gigs/month on the unlimited plan and I got the text about tethering last week. I was waiting for the email to show up but instead I got a letter from some manager in my state. The letter stated that customers were their number one priority and they were offering 1000 free minutes if I bring that iPhone in to a store so they "can show me all the great features and services that they offer for that phone". (It didn't seem mandatory that I go in.)
This seems like an elaborate ploy to catch me but in a nicer way than the emails that some people had been getting. Have any of you received this? Is it just a coincidence or is something up?
Two different programs. I got the 1000 free min as well and did it via a text. If you got a text message, you have been flagged as a person tethering and if you don't respond they will switch your plan.
But the 'system' is broken
Obviously there is a problem with the system when you have this many people subverting the assumed agreement to only use the data on ones phone, right? If a consumer pays for 2gigs, why would a carrier care what platform it's used on outside of blind greed? The model AT&T uses is retarded. (And I use that word in it's literal meaning) That's why there isn't any customer loyalty. You must me an exec there or something. No reasonable person would side with a communistic business model.
Obviously there is a problem with the system when you have this many people subverting the assumed agreement to only use the data on ones phone, right? If a consumer pays for 2gigs, why would a carrier care what platform it's used on outside of blind greed? The model AT&T uses is retarded. (And I use that word in it's literal meaning) That's why there isn't any customer loyalty. You must me an exec there or something. No reasonable person would side with a communistic business model.
Who cares about greed though? AT&T has a legal right to be greedy. I know that you dislike this greed, but AT&T is not alone. Virtually every single US carrier imposes an extra charge for tethering on smartphone plans. Full stop. That has nothing to do whatsoever with the notion of AT&T of enforcing their contracts.
If you want to rant about unfair business tactics, your best bet would be to talk to government regulators because so far they have not made the business of differentiating data illegal. And the general way that business operate is that if it is not illegal and they can profit off of it, then it makes business sense to do that.
That is very weak sauce on your part. They never said you would not have to give up unlimited data either, or it would not be part of a new package or plan.
You inference as to what it would be was just that, your own baseless speculation, not some kind of binding committment.
This has been explained in this thread and others many times, over and over again. Clearly you don't understand what is happening, how the business model works, how the billing works or how the pricing works. Please go educate yourself before continuing in this discussion further.
Also look up what communism is while you are at it.
145GB this month, warning and still tethering....
500Gbs this year
Wow! How? Or rather what?
Actually, the real question is that even though ATT warns, they will not actually switch you?
I don't think you can state that. They never said they would do it by any specific date or anything.
I read the warning as a plan change would not be made for the next bill. Rather it would be made for bill AFTER the next one.
Basically everyone is still in the grace period. It will be a couple of weeks at the earliest before we see whether automatic plan changes happen.
If the switch you the are changing the contract. Would that not trigger you being able to end the contract with no penalty, just as you could when the notify you of changes in fees?
Grey area as you are violating the contract to begin with and they have a right to switch you at that point.