Manhattan, NY – Lawsuit: Apple and AT&T Put Out Phony iPhone

Manhattan, NY – iPhone? More like iFraud, a Manhattan engineer says.

Francis Monticelli bought the iPhone 3G-S because it seemed an improvement on his old iPhone with the promised ability to send and receive photos and videos as text messages. The only problem was it didn’t work.

Monticelli launched a class-action lawsuit yesterday against Apple and the wireless division of AT&T, saying the companies duped customers with “unfair, deceptive and fraudulent practices” in the way they marketed, advertised and sold the iPhone 3G and 3G-S.

“Our client’s experience is shared by others, numbering in the thousands or even hundreds of thousands,” said attorney Robert Brill of Manhattan.

Monticelli bought the 2009 iPhone, model 3G-S, because it offered the ability to send photos in messages.

When the promised application didn’t work, AT&T’s first answer was to tell customers to go to a computer if they wanted to see their photos and videos, the lawsuit claimed.

Apple and AT&T then promised customers that any problems would be fixed with the iPhone OS 3.0 software update.

But even with the software update, it still didn’t work; Apple and AT&T knew the new version was “ineffective and defective,” the lawsuit said.

Susan Lundgren, a spokeswoman for Apple, said the company does not comment on pending litigation. Mark Siegel, an AT&T spokesman, said the company kept its promise to offer a messaging feature.