Vodafone fined 951,000 by comreg. Customer refunds coming.

cookie1977

http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComReg1234.pdf

Vodafone has today agreed to pay ComReg €951,000 following an investigation by ComReg into a discrepancy between prices published by Vodafone for calls to numbers in the 1520, 1580 and 1590 number ranges and the actual charges applied to customers. ComReg concluded that the charges applied to Vodafone’s prepay mobile customers for calls to 1520, 1580 and 1590 numbers had been 10 cents, 30 cents and 30 cents per minute higher than the published rates of €0.25, €2.99 and €3.69 per minute respectively during the period from December 2008 through to December 2011.

Vodafone has been able to identify the customers affected by this incident between December 2010 and December 2011 but the customer data for the two years prior to December 2010 is not available. The customers identified by Vodafone will receive a refund either by cheque or directly through phone credit, together with an additional payment or credit by way of compensation. The amount that will be rebated to those customers that made calls during the period for which detailed records are available is approximately €800,000, including compensation for inconvenience caused. The majority of these payments will be automatic by way of credit applied to the customer’s phone and will be made over the next few days.

Where you affected?

Sponge Bob

Voda won't let you block calls to premium numbers here but they will in the UK. No wonder.

mambo

This went on for THREE YEARS and no customer noticed the overcharging?

Or maybe some did and reported it to Vodafone, but Vodafone never connected the dots.

Of course it's harder to notice the overcharging on a prepay phone, as you don't get an itemised bill.

cookie1977

mambo wrote: »

This went on for THREE YEARS and no customer noticed the overcharging?

Or maybe some did and reported it to Vodafone, but Vodafone never connected the dots.

Of course it's harder to notice the overcharging on a prepay phone, as you don't get an itemised bill.

Funny you mention that. Comreg are also working on new billing measures including:

With respect to pre-paid consumers, their service provider must provide them, free-of-charge, with an adequate facility to verify their charges, if they so request.

ComReg proposes that a pre-paid consumer should have the same benefits as post-paid consumers, the consumer should be provided with information on their transactions, either electronically, or by paper medium free-of-charge, depending on how the consumer can access the bill.

http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComReg1178.pdf

No doubt this is to do with incidences such as the one above. These proposals haven't been implemented yet but should be before the end of the year

JTMan

cookie1977 wrote: »

Funny you mention that. Comreg are also working on new billing measures including:



http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComReg1178.pdf

No doubt this is to do with incidences such as the one above. These proposals haven't been implemented yet but should be before the end of the year

Very interesting.

This is going to cause big cost for Three and others to ensure online billing is offered to prepay customers.

Meteor are already compliant.

Sponge Bob

They can feck off. The Directive dates back to November 2009 and became law in Ireland in 2011. Then the dopes in Comreg decied to consult on it....they could have done that in 2010.

The amendment to the Universal Services directive expands controls from a single designated Universal Provider...ie eircom since Universal Services directives came in in 1997...to designated entities with significant market power.

That would be eircom/meteor and O2 and Vodafone but not Three who are too small or BT or UPC for now.

We are interested in amended Article 10... Part A rights below.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:337:0011:0036:En:PDF

DESCRIPTION OF FACILITIES AND SERVICES REFERRED TO IN ARTICLE 10 (CONTROL OF EXPENDITURE), ARTICLE 29 (ADDITIONAL FACILITIES) AND ARTICLE 30 (FACILITATING CHANGE OF PROVIDER)

Part A:
Facilities and services referred to in Article 10
(a)
Itemised billing
Member States are to ensure that national regulatory authorities, subject to the requirements of relevant legislation on the protection of personal data and privacy, may lay down the basic level of itemised bills which are to be provided by undertakings to subscribers free of charge in order that they can:
(i)
allow verification and control of the charges incurred in using the public communications network at a fixed location and/or related publicly available telephone services; and
(ii)
adequately monitor their usage and expenditure and thereby exercise a reasonable degree of control over their bills.
Where appropriate, additional levels of detail may be offered to subscribers at reasonable tariffs or at no charge.
Calls which are free of charge to the calling subscriber, including calls to helplines, are not to be identified in the calling subscriber’s itemised bill.

Furthermore.

(b)
Selective barring for outgoing calls or premium SMS or MMS, or, where technically feasible, other kinds of similar applications, free of charge
i.e. the facility whereby the subscriber can, on request to the designated undertaking that provides telephone services, bar outgoing calls or premium SMS or MMS or other kinds of similar applications of defined types or to defined types of numbers free of charge.

and

(c)
Pre-payment systems
Member States are to ensure that national regulatory authorities may require designated undertakings to provide means for consumers to pay for access to the public communications network and use of publicly available telephone services on pre-paid terms.