A lawsuit seeking to potentially cover hundreds of thousands of America Online Inc (AOL) subscribers accuses the Time Warner Inc unit of illegally billing customers by creating secondary accounts for them without their consent.
The lawsuit, filed last month in St. Clair County Circuit Court on behalf of 10 AOL customers in six states, claims the company confused and deceived customers about the charges, stalled them from canceling unauthorized accounts and refused to return questioned fees.
"AOL exploits its subscribers' confidential billing information to unlawfully generate additional revenue by charging subscribers for additional membership accounts that they neither order nor request," the lawsuit alleges, calling the scheme "common, uniform and continuing."
The lawsuit, seeking class-action status, mirrors more than a dozen other actions that have been pending in state and federal courts throughout the country, said Stuart Talley, an attorney from Sacramento, California, representing the plaintiffs in the Illinois lawsuit. All of the federal cases were consolidated in California two years ago, Talley said.
Nicholas Graham, an AOL spokesman, said the Dulles, Virginia-based company considers the Illinois lawsuit "a legal rehash that has as much legal value as refiling your personal income taxes from four years ago."
"The important thing is that we deny the allegations now as we've done several times, and we will defend this case as we have other cases accordingly," he said, noting that AOL "takes extraordinary efforts to resolve any issues the members raise."
"We have safeguards in place now that prevent unauthorized charges, and we have credit and refund policies that do justice to the consumer," he said.
The lawsuit also names ICT Group Inc, an outsourcing company AOL retained to respond to customer complaints and billing matters. Messages with ICT seeking comment were not immediately returned on Friday.
Plaintiffs include an Illinoisan, two Californians, three Tennesseans, a West Virginian, two Alabamans and a New Yorker.
No hearing date has been set on the Illinois case, which accuses AOL of violating Illinois' Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act.
The latest lawsuit alleges that AOL misrepresented that subscribers may add up to seven different screen names to a membership account for free.
But AOL "in many instances" spun off those screen names into additional membership accounts without the subscribers' knowledge, then charged and collected a separate monthly fee for each account.
The company requires members to pay charges and fees by credit card, electronic withdrawals from their bank accounts or by adding to their telephone bills, giving subscribers no opportunity to review a bill before making a payment, the lawsuit claims.
To maintain its customer base, according to the lawsuit, AOL has instructed customer-service contractors such as ICT to prevent AOL subscribers from canceling their accounts "at all costs" and to resist giving refunds. Customers who complain are offered at least one month of free AOL Internet service instead of refunds or credits, while "unsatisfied customers who insist on canceling or terminating their AOL memberships are obstructed and delayed from doing so," the lawsuit claims.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort