AT&T flails in the quicksand

The name of AT&T's (NYSE: T) pain, for this month anyway, is Matthew Spaccarelli. He's a customer that gave the carrier a small thumping in court, and that would have left AT&T with a very minor scab. But it seems the company just couldn't resist picking at it. It all started when Spaccarelli took AT&T to small-claims court over his smartphone data rate being throttled. He's an unlimited data user, and like many unlimited AT&T subscribers who use the network heavily, he saw his data rates being choked down to a crawl. Most users react to this by frowning and grumbling and swearing and wandering around in Sprint (NYSE: S) stores, but Spaccarelli did some small-scale litigation and walked away with $850 in his pocket. So good for him. But that wasn't the end of it. AT&T reportedly reached out to Spaccarelli and invited him to some settlement talks. In this case, "invited" apparently meant "participate in the talks under a non-disclosure agreement or we'll dump you as a customer." That NDA is important -- it would have forbidden Spaccarelli from posting documents related to his case online. Those documents could serve as a how-to manual for any angry AT&T customer who's experienced data throttling to take the carrier to court and possibly walk out with nearly $1,000 in hand. Instead, Spaccarelli forwarded AT&T's invitation to the AP. So not only does AT&T look like a bully, but it's also drawn more attention to his court documents. AT&T has its own side of the story. It says that NDAs are common practice for any kind of settlement talk, and that Spaccarelli actually reached out to the company, not vice versa. Also, AT&T says Spaccarelli admitted to unauthorized tethering, which is a cardinal sin in the religion of wireless providers. Whatever the truth is, the truthier version of the story is making Spaccarelli out to be a champion of annoyed wireless users, while AT&T is coming out looking like a clueless victim of the Streisand effect.