UK clamps down on ringtone rip-offs…Again
Premium telephony watchdog PhonePayPlus introduces new rules to curb customer complaints. PhonePlayPlus this morning confirmed that any company not allowing customers to stop a mobile content subscription quickly and easily will be barred from operation with immediate effect.
It’s like 2004 all over again in the UK off-deck mobile content industry (worth £460m in 2007/08) as rising complaints against ‘rip off’ ringtone providers have forced the premium telephony regulator to take action.
PhonePayPlus says it received more than 8,000 mobile-related complaints in 2007/8, a 108 per cent increase on the previous year. In the first three months of 2008 alone, PhonepayPlus received more than 4,500 complaints.
The regular maintains there is also anecdotal evidence of consumers, including young people, being charged several thousand pounds as a result of bad practice by content and service providers. Additional measures, which PhonePayPlus says will come into affect by winter, will ensure consumers: “receive fewer and more targeted promotional text messages; are able to make informed purchase decisions; and find it as easy to leave a subscription service as it was to join”.
In 2007 PhonepayPlus adjudged 33 mobile services to be in breach and imposed fines of more than £360,000. In the first six months of 2008, we have already adjudicated on 25 mobile phone-paid services with total fines in excess of £390,000.