Over 2,000 complaints against providers of premium rate phone services were lodged with Regtel last year, according to a new report. Regtel’s annual report reveals that overall approximately 30,000 calls were made to its call centre in the year to March, of which 80 percent were related to subscription services. Of the 30,000 calls, a total of 2,111 were complaints, 94 percent of which were related to subscription services.

The majority of complaints were from consumers who claimed they had never subscribed to premium rate services, yet still found themselves being billed. Others focused on problems with trying to opt-out of such services. A large number of parents also contacted the regulator with complaints about their children having unwittingly subscribed to expensive premium rate services.

The 2,111 complaints received by the regulator to the end of March would seem to mark a substantial decline given that Regtel’s last report — which was issued earlier this year — revealed 13,321 complaints. However, the latest report has reclassified the figures to separate general enquiries from actual complaints with many calls that would have fallen into the complaint category now being treated as general enquiries.

Despite the reclassification though, there has been a decline in complaints, a decline the regulator, Pat Breen, attributes to steps taken by Regtel to inform consumers about premium rate services.

Earlier this year an explanatory information leaflet on how to deal with unwanted text messages was circulated, while in late summer the regulator launched its ‘STOP’ campaign, which advises consumers how to unsubscribe from premium rate phone services.

“The subscription element still makes up the bulk of complaints at present, but the message does now seem to be getting through,” Breen told ENN.

“What seems to have happened in a lot of cases is that people subscribe to a service but don’t bother to read the first text message they receive which gives them details about the service, including costs and details on how to unsubscribe. It appears that many consumers delete that message and the repeated messages they get each time they’ve spent EUR20 on a particular service,” he added.

Breen added that things are likely to improve further with the introduction of a revised code of practice which will feature more stringent requirements for premium rate service providers.

Although the number of complaints filed with Regtel remains relatively high, it seems that there’s little let-up in the demand for premium rate services, with revenues of EUR94 million for the sector in the year to March. Approximately two thirds of this amount was spent on premium SMS with the remainder spent on fixed line calls.

Overall, 112 million fixed line and SMS premium rate calls were made to a variety of services, including ringtones, logos/wallpapers, competitions, information, Tarot and horoscope services. According to Regtel, a growing trend is the use of fixed line premium rate numbers to make international calls.

Posted on November 15th, 2007 by lbraum
Filed under: Ireland