From the FTC site:
"First, the company billed some consumers for Internet service based upon the
date they received their i-openers. These consumers, however, did not owe the
company money because, when they ordered their i-openers, the company had
promised them that they would not be billed until they actually used the service."
"Second, the company back billed these same consumers for months of Internet service
by charging their credit or debit cards without their consent."
"As part of the settlement,
the company agreed to refund those consumers for the amounts illegally charged to their
accounts."
It appears from my reading that there are two classes of people entitled to refunds:
1) If they said you wouldn't be billed until it phoned home, and it didn't phone home, and you got billed.
2) If you got back-billed for multiple months (IIRC there was a thread where people got hit with multiple months of billing all at once, but I can't verify that.)
Does anyone know how such refunds are to be administered? (i.e. do you have to phone NPLI and ask for them, or should you expect that within a certain timeframe, your credit card will see a pleasant surprise?)
Without getting into the ethics of getting money from a nearly-dead dot-com, if there's an FTC ruling, and the company has agreed to settle on this basis - it seems that people in either category have a right to this money, and they ought to be able to get it if they choose to exercise that right. Anyone have details?
There's also an article on Slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/07/02/239233.shtml
