The customer can never listen...

[Andara Bledin]

Well, while I'm certainly not defending their 'screaming' at you, they do have a point. "Unlimited" means 'without limits'. If there is a limit ('reasonable', 'average' or not), then it is not "unlimited".

Yeah. If unlimited doesn't actually mean unlimited, then that's false advertising, no matter how you slice it. I'd file that one under shady business practices.

^-.-^

[Shengirl]

My question is, how extreme are these shady limits? For instance, does a person have to be on the line 8 hrs a day and check their email 67 times in order to be cutoff? Or is it not so excessive?

[DesignFox]

It has to be pretty excessive from what I understand. But I assume that there are different plans for different devices based on the company's expectations of your uses for that device.

For example: Plan X is designed strictly for phone use. It is an unlimited data plan for a phone. A phone user may do 1 or 2 emails, use IM, and download the occasional ringtone/check weather or sports, maybe watch a video file or two.

Plan Y is designed specifically for data devices. A data device user is most likely a business person. They are constantly checking email, sending files, or browsing basic web pages/listings.

Plan Y obviously costs more than Plan X. The difference is that the average business person is going to be using a hell of a lot more data than the average phone user. That's why there is a difference- not everyone uses the same amount of data, so not everyone pays the higher cost. If you have a data device, on a cheaper phone plan, and you are obviously using a larger chunk of data, you get nailed and your service gets cut off...I make no secret of this when I set people up with their devices- as with the idiot in the OP, I try to make damned sure people understand why there are differences in the cost, and set them up with what is right based on their data needs.

As for the unlimited not being unlimited... My BF had a WiFi card/plan with [provider]. One night, he accidentally left his laptop streaming MP3's from a website....overnight. Fast forward to the next day, his service was cut off. They didn't bill him for it, they just terminated the service. No explanation came with his usual phone bill..the WiFi line just wasn't on there. They let him out of his 2 year contract and didn't charge him the termination fee, either.

They are serious about it. And while I agree that it's rather shady to say unlimited when it isn't really, if you read the fine print, they DO state that they can terminate your service whenever they want for any reason.