- Wednesday, 25 November 2009
- INQ Mobile
- RSS
I wrote a story on microprocessors once. Paper would have been better - The Evil Dr Spinola
Complaints rise over the peddling of mobile phone twaddle
MOBILE PHONE COMPANIES are receiving more complaints than ever over mis-selling, reports Ofcom today.
Traditionally, landline companies have been the target of such complaints, but over the past year mobile companies have overtaken. The regulator said it receivied 813 complaints about mis-selling in September alone, outdoing land-line firms for the first time.
A major source of customer woes, says Ofcom, is cash-back deals promised by networks - when a company promises to reimburse new clients with a proportion of the line rental. This sometimes doesn't happen at all, says the group.
The Consumer Experience report says that mis-selling in the fixed line market dropped after a peak in July, earlier this year. Mobile network mis-selling however has been steadily increasing, while broadband and cable mis-selling has remained stable throughout the year.
Ofcom says that a particularly nasty way to mis-sell, dubbed Slamming, has apparently been popular, with 13,037 complaints sent in in September. Slamming is when a customer is switched from one company to another without agreeing.
A review is going ahead which will look to the idea of new legal requirements to stop the mobile mis-selling.
Check out the Ofcom release here . µ
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
the other goldmine is the text messages. Its amazing how easily people can subscribe to text messaging services that send things like a joke a day for a buck a day. Most of the time there is no confirmation and no clear instructions on how to remove the subscription. Since most of the time the billing department of the carrier is used to collect, it is difficult to dispute.
Oh come now, there has to be a signature somewhere, even if the victim did not necessarily understand what he was signing.
Don't tell me that one mobile company can just contact a rival company, say "hey, you have a Mr. SoAndSo who has signed up with us" and expect the contract to be transferred.
That can't happen, right ? So there has to be a con of some sort. You click a button, acknowledge an SMS or something and that click or acceptation is transformed into "congratulations, you've just bought a new house and signed a 50-year loan" sort of thing.
The victim has to have given some form of consent, otherwise there is no authorization to transfer.
At least, I hope so, no ?