TracFone has agreed to pay customers $40 million to reimburse them for what the FTC labeled as deceptive advertising.
From 2009 to 2013, TracFone advertised “unlimited data” plans for $45 per month. Despite the promise of unlimited monthly data, TracFone throttled customers who surpassed 3GB of data and cut off entirely some customers who surpassed 5GB of data.
“The issue here is simple: when you promise consumers ‘unlimited,’ that means unlimited,” said Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. TracFone began to disclose the data limits and throttling policies in 2013, but the FTC said, “In many cases, the disclosures were in very small print or on the back of packages or cards where consumers were likely to miss them.”
Millions of customers were throttled, according to the FTC. TracFone will refund an unknown number of customers $40 million and more clearly spell out its network management policies.
