For any iPhone or iPad users who might have suspected that AT&T wasn’t accurately measuring their data usage, a new lawsuit claims you might be right.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit, filed late last week in California, hired an independent consulting firm who claim to have found that AT&T “systematically overstate[s] web server traffic by 7% to 14%,” with some results over 300% of what was actually used.

From Apple Insider:

As an example, the suit claims that an iPhone user on AT&T’s network who downloads a 50KB website would usually be charged 53.5KB for a 7 percent overcharge. If the data were to be calculated 300 percent higher, it would register as a 150KB use of bandwidth.

The lawsuit also alleges that AT&T “bills for phantom data traffic when there is no actual data use initiated by the customer.” The independent consulting firm… allegedly took a new iPhone, disabled all push notifications, location services, had no e-mail account configured, and closed all applications. Over 10 days, the phone allegedly used 2,292KB of AT&T’s data plan.

“This is like the rigged gas pump charging you when you never even pulled your car into the station,” the complaint reads.

At this point, AT&T is the only defendant in the suit.

“We intend to defend ourselves vigorously,” a rep for the wireless provider said in response to the suit. “Transparent and accurate billing is a top priority for AT&T.”

Lawsuit accuses AT&T of overcharging iPhone, iPad customer data use [Apple Insider]

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