A woman who received a $5,077 bill from AT&T for data charges on her netbook is suing the wireless carrier, along with RadioShack, for fraud. The lawsuit was filed by Oklahoma resident Billie Parks last week, and alleges that the two companies conspired to promote a netbook + data deal that deliberately misled customers and tricked them into paying thousands of dollars per month for service.

Parks purchased a netbook from RadioShack in December of 2008 after the electronics retailer began advertising a heavily subsidized netbook deal: for $99.99 and a two-year AT&T contract, customers could buy a netbook with AT&T's DataConnect plan, allowing them to get online from anywhere. The DataConnect service costs roughly $60 per month before the usual taxes and fees.

According to Parks' complaint, she was warned by RadioShack that her first AT&T bill might be a bit more than expected due to a $36 activation fee, a month's worth of service billed in advance, and prorated charges from when she signed up. She was not, however warned that any Internet data usage over 5GB would result in "astronomical additional charges running into the thousands of dollars." She claims that the Customer Service Summary she received states that additional charges apply, but it was impossible for consumers to determine what those charges would be.

As a result, Parks believes that she and other RadioShack/AT&T consumers were victims of fraud due to the companies' "misleading" advertising and convenient omissions. The complaint also charges the two companies with engaging in deceptive trade practices and violations of Consumer Protection Acts in the various states where the plan was sold. Parks is attempting to have her lawsuit classified as a class action and hopes to see RadioShack and AT&T ordered to cover all of the additional charges, cancel the DataConnect contracts, and be hit with an injunction barring the companies from enforcing the contracts in the future.

As usual for these types of cases, AT&T indicates that some of the accusations are a bit excessive and says it goes to great lengths to make sure customers know the details of additional charges. "We're reviewing the suit and don’t have a comment on it at this time," AT&T spokesperson Seth Bloom told Ars. "But I can tell you that we go to considerable lengths to inform customers of the limits involved in these plans. We display the plan usage limits and overage rates on our collateral, terms and conditions, and on att.com, And customers can check their usage using myWireless Account or by using the usage monitoring capability on the AT&T Communications Manager application."

Their partner, RadioShack doesn't appear to make mention of the cap on any of its promotional materials, which is undoubtedly going to take this suit from "slam dunk" status (on the part of the defendants, that is) down to "layup." Ultimately, the fact that AT&T's own documentation communicates the limit and additional usage charges will hurt Parks' case, though the lawsuit may prompt the company to be even more direct with customers about how much they could wind up paying when they commit to that contract.

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