They should be sued for false advertising.
Not only the US, in my country they do the same, although it seems they're a bit less restrictive.
When I moved to my new apartment the only practical solution for internet was 3G and I looked at all the carriers. There were only one that appeared to have a subscription where they didn't reserve the right to throttle the speed. This carrier had an info text on all their plans about their right to throttle the speed except on their fastest and most expensive plan. This plan didn't have this reservation in the information.
I went to their store and talked to them. I asked if this was true and if I could rely on this since I send and recieve large amounts of uncompressed audio data every month and need the bandwidth.
They ensured me this was so. Almost a month went by and I got an sms about how I have almost used up my included data and can purchase more! I looked at the actual contract and surprise surprise, they DO reserve the right to throttle the data, contrary to the information I've gotten. I called them and asked them how their sales person could have said this to me and they basically told me: "Sucks to be you. You signed the contract, now you're stuck with us for 23 more months".
Now all of a sudden this plan also has the information text about an arbitrary upper limit.
This really reinforced my belief that sales persons don't have a clue about the products they're selling.
The weird thing is that while the clause states that they will throttle if my usage surpasses 120% of the avarage usage or something like that, the warning sms I get strongly suggest that it's a preset limit. And how will the problems of overloaded network go away if I just pay them more money? Will they instantly use this money to install more equipment to handle the increased load?
It is absolutely very wrong if you've promised not to do it in your advertisements and get customers based on this premise.
Calling something unlimited suggests it's not a finite resource that has to be divided among people. It's like the concept of infinite. It doesn't matter if you divide infinite between 10 people or 1000000 or 10^100 people, every single one of them will still have infinite.
I'm fully aware that this is impossible for the carriers to deliver, what I'm saying is they shouldn't advertise as such.
Not only the US, in my country they do the same, although it seems they're a bit less restrictive.
When I moved to my new apartment the only practical solution for internet was 3G and I looked at all the carriers. There were only one that appeared to have a subscription where they didn't reserve the right to throttle the speed. This carrier had an info text on all their plans about their right to throttle the speed except on their fastest and most expensive plan. This plan didn't have this reservation in the information.
I went to their store and talked to them. I asked if this was true and if I could rely on this since I send and recieve large amounts of uncompressed audio data every month and need the bandwidth.
They ensured me this was so. Almost a month went by and I got an sms about how I have almost used up my included data and can purchase more! I looked at the actual contract and surprise surprise, they DO reserve the right to throttle the data, contrary to the information I've gotten. I called them and asked them how their sales person could have said this to me and they basically told me: "Sucks to be you. You signed the contract, now you're stuck with us for 23 more months".
Now all of a sudden this plan also has the information text about an arbitrary upper limit.
This really reinforced my belief that sales persons don't have a clue about the products they're selling.
The weird thing is that while the clause states that they will throttle if my usage surpasses 120% of the avarage usage or something like that, the warning sms I get strongly suggest that it's a preset limit. And how will the problems of overloaded network go away if I just pay them more money? Will they instantly use this money to install more equipment to handle the increased load?
It is absolutely very wrong if you've promised not to do it in your advertisements and get customers based on this premise.
Calling something unlimited suggests it's not a finite resource that has to be divided among people. It's like the concept of infinite. It doesn't matter if you divide infinite between 10 people or 1000000 or 10^100 people, every single one of them will still have infinite.
I'm fully aware that this is impossible for the carriers to deliver, what I'm saying is they shouldn't advertise as such.
