Mobile content industry’s name almost mud
Rating: PhonePayPlus’ recent adjudication against Tanla Mobile
It seems that my rants against mobile content aggregator, Tanla Mobile, have been vindicated by PhonePayPlus in a recent adjudication here. If things carry on like this, however, the industry’s name won’t just be tarnished, it will be mud.For the background into mobile content which I fond unstoppable, please see here. It appears that yours truly wasn’t alone. Apparently “a ‘system failure’ was experienced on short code 82600 which consequently prevented 458 ‘STOP’ command requests from being processed.” What? That means 458 attempts to stop Tanla charging £4.50 each week were utterly futile. How can anybody possibly justify that?
Take this section from the very lengthy PhonePayPlus adjudication. Apparently ‘aggravating factors’ against Tanla included, “The service provider’s breach history: there had been six cases since May 2007 where breaches were upheld against the service provider, including two involving 2 Comm Ltd as information provider.”
What possible motivation has Tanla got for cleaning up its act when it’s getting away with one major compliant every two months? BTW, Tanla sent me a refund cheque for £1.50 – by mistake – instead of the £35 it promised. Worse still, neither the compliments slip or the cheque gave any indication as to which company I was dealing with.
Compare this situation against these three points outlined in a report entitled ‘The Regulation of Premium Rate Services – an Ofcom Report for DTI’ back in December 2004. According to the report …
• Phone companies must not pass revenue on to their service providers for 30 days
• Service providers must have adequate customer service and redress processes
• Where ICSTIS orders a service provider to refund consumers, phone companies must make funds withheld by them available for consumers to claim redress for three months
I particularly like the bit about “adequate customer service and redress process.” How can the common practice of a provision of a premium rate number as the complaints desk helpline be regarded as “adequate”?
I’m adamant that something needs to be done about industry self-regulation fast before a UK politician spots it as a cheap voter winner and virtually shuts down mobile content provision.
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