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 Washington State Supreme Court ruled against AT&T (formerly Cingular Wireless) saying arbitration clauses in cell phone contracts violate the Consumer Protection Act. Typically arbitration agreements are in the fine print of any cellphone contract and take away the customer's right to create class action lawsuits. Originally, Cingular customers were suing over a roaming charge dispute. When the class-action suit was filed, Cingular tried to block it, citing their arbitration clause.
According to the case, each individual consumer was being overcharged by anywhere from a buck to $40. Now, individually this is utterly insignificant and wouldn't be worth bringing to court, but on the whole, Cingular Wireless overcharged the public by quite a large margin. This situation is a textbook reason why class-action lawsuits exist: to protect the public from corporate nickel-&-dime theft.
Even though the suit itself is still unresolved, this ruling will undoubtedly be a watershed case for business ethics; just because the clause was standard doesn't mean it was ethical. As Cingular was bought out after this suit had been filed, we were left wondering if AT&T had the foresight to factor this PR nightmare into the dealmaking process. Regardless, looks like AT&T married itself to the problem, and now they might have to pay up.
[Via Cellular-news]
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