Illegal cell content charges

05 August 2009 - 13:22
By Wendy Knowler (Consumerwatch)

When it comes to cellphone bills, the word content has a very specific meaning – it refers to downloads – ringtones, games, wallpapers and the like, which the subscriber allegedly asked for, at a hefty price.

Every week we hear from people who are adamant that they never agreed to subscribe to any such service.
 
This is a tricky area, because there’s always the possibility that someone else - a teenager in the house, for example - got hold of the subscriber’s handset and responded to some advert, or did an online quiz, providing the parent's cellphone number.

The industry is notorious for tricking people into subscribing to a service whereby they are billed every day for some little non-essential bit of cellphone puffery, and in recent years Waspa has steadily been putting a stop to the sneaky practices.

Waspa is the Wireless Application Service Providers Association which was launched five years ago to regulate the industry and protect consumers from bad practices.
It’s Waspa’s code of conduct which forces these content providers to inform subscribers how to stop their subscription services, and which recently halted one of the biggest areas of abuse. What used to happen is someone would respond to an advert for a ringtone, or horoscope or something  similar, by sending a single SMS - they thought they were just buying that one item as a once-off, having missed the small-print advising them that by responding they were agreeing to be subscribed to the service.

And by the time they found out, a whole lot of their pre-paid airtime had been swallowed up by hideously expensive content charges, or they’d run up a huge cellphone bill.

Waspa has since adjusted its code to prohibit this – agreeing to an ongoing subscription service has to be a separate process, not linked to requesting a single item.

That should spare a lot of people a lot of unnecessary frustration and expense, but many danger areas remain, such as seemingly free quizzes which pop up on websites. They require your cellphone number; supposedly in order to send you your result, but the next thing you know you're an unwitting content subscriber.

Every week we hear of cases of people who say they recall getting some strange SMS-s, and after glancing at them briefly, they deleted them. By doing so, they didn’t notice the bit at the end of the SMS telling them how to unsubscribe, and so the content charges kept on piling up.

By doing so, they didn’t notice the bit at the end of the SMS telling them how to unsubscribe, and so the content charges kept on piling up.
Big mistake.

As a journalist it’s very difficult to prove that someone didn’t solicit a particular content service. The Wasps claim to be able to prove how it was done; the subscriber is adamant it didn’t happen, but often can’t be absolutely sure that a third party didn’t help themselves to their phone…
 
Waspa's recent ban on service providers linking competitions with content subscriptions was a good move, because a lot of people who thought they were just entering a competition, were being tricked into becoming subscribed to an expensive mobile content subscription.

But the ban came at a time when a particularly sneaky scratch-card competition was already distributed in a number of prominent magazines.

The competition was run by Jo’burg-based Wasp Opera Interactive, with content provided by Clarion Marketing, which is based in Sydney, Australia.

They placed strips of scratch cards, offering amazing prizes - including a Hawaiian holiday, a car and R60 000 in cash - as inserts in DSTV’s Dish magazine, the Sunday Times magazine, People magazine and Essentials, among others.

But the tiny print on the cards stated the true intent of that competition – those who entered were agreeing to be subscribed to a mobile content service, which would cost them R14 every two days, or R210 a month.

So people who thought they were just entering a competition, found out weeks later when they got their cellphone bills that they were subscribed to a content service.
Clarion Marketing argued that they made no secret of the fact that they were punting a subscription service.

“The scratch card is merely a marketing mechanism to promote our content club” said Clarion’s Gavin McConnon, adding that the subscription element was clearly spelt out.

I begged to differ, and, thankfully, so did Waspa.

It held an emergency meeting to discuss the scratch card competition, and ruled that, even judged on the old version of the code which didn’t prohibit dressing up a subscription agreement as a competition,  – “the promotional material fell short of the requirement to ‘prominently and explicitly’ identify it as a subscription service".

Opera Interactive was ordered to stop the competition completely, with immediate effect; to stop charging those who were being billed for the subscription service after entering the competition, pending the formal review of the complaints, and to inform all “entrants” of the ruling and offer them a refund.

So if you are among the many who unwittingly got subscribed to this service, know that you are entitled to a full refund of all those mobile content charges.

Call Opera Interactive on 0 11 482 7272 or email trevor.louw@operainteractive.co.za

Well done, Waspa, and we look forward to the continuing tightening up of its Code. Dare we hope that one day soon only those who really meant to sign up for ringtones and graphics subscriptions are being billed for them?
 
WHAT TO DO:

Be very wary of quizzes and IQ or brain age tests which pop up on websites – by responding and providing your cellphone number you are agreeing to subscribe to an ongoing service. Many people have been caught this way.

If you get a strange SMS, do not just delete it. It may not be offering you a content service, it may be telling you that you are already hooked up. Scroll right down to the end, and follow the unsubscribe instructions exactly.

Do not delete the SMS-s and keep a note of the dates you received them, and the dates you sent your STOP SMS.
Check your cellphone bills very carefully for content charges.

A lot of cellphone subscribers express fury with their networks for placing what they deem to be rogue charges on their bills. The networks argue that the do so in terms of an agreement they have with the various Wasps, the Wasps allegedly having proof that they  - the subscriber – agreed to the mobile content subscription in the same way as consumers agree to debit orders with a range of companies, which are processed by their banks.

Both the banks and the networks get rewarded handsomely for making it happen, of course.

So it follows that the networks and cellphone service providers are obliged to help you pinpoint who has been billing you for content, and give you contact numbers.

If you contest the charges, and you’re getting no joy from the Wasp, you should get hold of Waspa – www.waspa.org.za

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