AT&T to settle lawsuit with calling cards

AT&T to settle lawsuit with calling cards

TAMPA, Fla. - AT&T Corp. agreed Tuesday to give 8,000 calling cards to Florida military overseas or their families and pay the state's attorney general $250,000 to settle a lawsuit for wrongfully billing consumers.
The settlement, announced by Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist during a 3 p.m. news conference, comes on top of more than $1 million in refunds and bill credits the long-distance giant made to 86,763 Florida consumers since January 2004.
Betsy Palmer, a spokeswoman for AT&T, called donating the calling cards ''a gesture of goodwill."
Maj. Gen. John Castellaw, chief of staff for U.S. Central Command based at MacDill Air Force Base, joined Crist during the news conference, accepting the calling cards on behalf of military women and men from Florida serving in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait.
''This is a big boost to their morale to be able to call home," he said.
Crist said the 60-minute calling cards were valued at about $260,000.
The $250,000 AT&T will pay to Crist's office will cover legal fees and costs in the case. In return, Crist agreed to drop the lawsuit. A circuit court judge in Leon County still must sign off on the deal, Crist said.
''We could not be happier with concluding this litigation on such positive terms," he said in a news release.
Crist sued AT&T in April, seeking to stop the long-distance telephone giant from wrongfully billing consumers. The lawsuit also claimed AT&T coerced Florida residents who called with complaints to sign up for long-distance service.
The saga began in January 2004 when AT&T started billing 1.1 million people across the United States $3.95 for state-to-state, direct-dialed long distance. The company said a computer glitch caused the charge to be added to the bills of AT&T customers on other long-distance plans or people who weren't AT&T customers.
Palmer, the AT&T spokeswoman, said the company was the one to call the error to the attention of consumers and utility commissions that regulate AT&T.
Crist then posted a notice about the error on his office's Web site after news reports began to crop up. After receiving hundreds of complaints, Crist filed the lawsuit, claiming AT&T was using unfair and deceptive trade practices.
After Crist filed the lawsuit, both sides tried to reach a settlement. AT&T balked at language that would have banned the company from pitching its services and products to consumers who called to complain.
The settlement announced Tuesday, however, does prohibit AT&T from pushing services and products to consumers who call to complain about the $3.95 error.
''Obviously, it's important for them to sell their product," Crist said, but forcing people to sign up for long- distance before the company would issue a refund is ''just wrong," he said.