A lady living in California claimed that Verizon actually sweet talked her into purchasing a speedier Internet plan, never mind that the carrier does not have the technological capability to deliver what it originally promised the lady. This complaint was filed in a Los Angeles state court, where Patricia Allen of Santa Monica claims that a Verizon sales representative managed to convince her to switch over to a $34.99 DSL plan from her existing $24.99 plan, where the former is meant to offer Internet at a theoretical top speed of 1.5Mb per second.
According to Allen, her connection reached only half the promised speed at best, and when she decided to file a complain with Verizon, Verizon’s technician had a different kind of advise for her – to make a downgrade since her line could only accept a maximum speed of 768k per second. With a refusal in issuing a refund, Allen says she has no other choice but to recourse to the court of law.
False advertising claims had also landed Apple in hot water recently, especially in Australia with folks in the UK looking into a similar case of 4G speeds on the new iPad, but I do wonder whether the Verizon sales representative who sold Allen the upgraded plan in the first place was aware of the technical limitations of customers in the first place. What do you think?