Now you have another reason to hate wireless data caps

Does anyone actually like the wireless data caps that mobile carriers impose? No, of course not. And now Re/code points out that everyone now has a brand-new reason to hate data caps: Apparently, they’re scaring us into spending more money than we need to spend on our data plans.

Re/code cites a recently released study conducted by the Government Accountability Office showing that customers whose carriers only offer capped data plans are more likely to go with pricier plans even though they may not end up using that much data per month. The reason? They’re apparently so scared of getting slapped with overage fees that they get more data than they need per month just in case.

In fact, it looks as though many consumers are having a tough time understanding just how much data they use each month even though both Verizon and AT&T offer calculators on their websites designed to help people figure it out.

So why haven’t these overly pricey capped wireless data plans caused a revolt among subscribers yet? Likely because many of us who have them simply hook our phones up to Wi-Fi whenever we can to avoid using 4G data. Were cable companies and other wireline ISPs to start implementing data caps on their services and thus impose limits on our ability to get as much data as we want through Wi-Fi, however, then people might start to get much more annoyed.