2012 Vodafone Ireland: €1.9m premium rate 'error'

[El Gringo]

http://www.independent.ie/business/i...r-3087058.html
50,000 will be refunded up to €4,000 in Vodafone error
April 20 2012

MORE than 50,000 Vodafone customers are due refunds ranging from €50 up to a massive €4,000 because they were charged too much for ringing premium rate phone services.

Vodafone has also been fined €951,000 by the regulator Comreg because of the scale of the error which resulted in a total overcharging of €1.9m.

However, thousands more prepay customers affected between 2008 and 2010 may be unable to get their money back because there are no records available to prove how much they were overcharged by the mobile giant.

Individual prepay customers were charged sums ranging from under €50 up to €4,170 too much for using services such as psychic and gambling phone lines between 2008 and 2011.

Vodafone said it had identified 56,000 customers overcharged since December 2010.

Customers were charged between 10c and 30c a minute too much for calls to 1520, 1580 and 1590 numbers which are all prefixes for high-price phone services.

Those customers overcharged since December 2010 will be paid €800,000 which will include compensation for the error, and the money will be paid as a credit to their mobile account or by cheque.

However, thousands more who were overcharged between December 2008 and December 2010 will have to demonstrate to Vodafone that they are due a rebate.

This will be difficult as the fact they were on prepay services meant they never got itemised bills for their calls.

Vodafone said its internal billing records prior to December 2010 had been destroyed under data protection law.

Charity

It said it had set aside €250,000 for refunds to these customers and others who had switched to a different mobile company in 2011.

Any unclaimed money from this fund would be donated to charity.

"Vodafone fully accepts that this is not ideal and not a perfect solution and regrets the impact this has had on customers," a spokesperson said.

It had also agreed a payment of €951,000 to ComReg.

Comreg said this €951,000 was paid under the Communications Regulations Act and the money would be passed on to the Exchequer.

Around 70 Vodafone customers are owed more than €500, 850 are owed over €100, some 1,200 are owed between €50 and €100 and 54,000 people are owed under €50.

The single biggest refund owed is €4,170, Vodafone said.

Vodafone will also have to submit to an independent audit of its billing processes and give these results to Comreg, with ongoing monitoring for the next two years of its charges.

Vodafone said that the overcharging error had been caused by an internal processes failure.

"There was a gap in the process for auditing and updating call charges for these services as they are outside of core package plans," it said in a statement.

Vodafone said it had identified the error in December in an internal audit sparked by a Comreg review of premium rate numbers.

Although it could not give figures for the number of consumers overcharged between 2008 and 2010 it estimated the total €1.9m cost based on summary records of the minutes of calls to the premium numbers.

Comreg said this overcharging error was the biggest in years.

I wonder how much of that was legitimate revenue and not actually premium rate fraud and scams.

[El Gringo]

http://www.independent.ie/national-n...s-2995911.html

Customers hit with huge bills for unwanted phone services
January 21 2012

Hundreds of consumers never saw the huge bills coming for tarot-card readings, and fortune-telling services they never wanted.

The Irish Independent can reveal details of the premium- rate phone companies that incurred the wrath of customers last year.

The state watchdog ComReg investigated 575 complaints in 2011 about premium-rate phone services.

These are phone services that charge customers high rates -- often as much as €2.40 per text -- for services such as horoscopes, social chatting or sports updates.

Three companies dominated the list of formal complaints to ComReg -- accounting for almost two-thirds of all complaints investigated, a Freedom of Information response shows.

Comreg declined to give a full breakdown of the nature and outcome of the complaints it investigated citing confidentiality and possible damage to its future negotiating position.

Dublin company Inkred, which operates a number of competition, fortune-telling and social chat sites, led the way with 140 complaints in 2011.

Details of complaints received over a one-month period show that problems with their "Prizeclub" service were the main source of dispute in January 2011.

Prizeclub is a text-based service that claims to have been used by half a million Irish subscribers. Customers are charged €4 a week for the chance to enter regular competitions.

Inkred declined to comment on its high complaints' tally or give details on how many customers it had issued refunds to over disputed charges last year.

Realm Communications, which operates the controversial Irish Psychics Live service and a number of other fortune-telling, weather and competition sites, was the subject of 97 complaints, with at least one problem relating to alleged underage access.

The Irish Independent also discovered that a link on its Irish Psychics Live website offering "€20 free phone credit" actually blacks out the crucial detail that availing of this offer will sign you up for a €40 a month subscription service to FoneClub.

This concealed information only becomes legible if you first provide your mobile phone number, allowing it to bombard you with promotional offers.

Realm declined to comment on its complaints record or the obscuring of cost information on the Irish Psychics Live site.

Zamano Solutions, meanwhile, was the subject of 130 complaints.

This Dublin-based company, which operates internationally, runs a number of subscription- based phone services ranging from tarot texts to movie previews and ringtone downloads.

Zamano incurred fines totalling more than £250,000 (€305,000) between 2006 and 2010 from the UK regulator Phonepayplus for breaches of its regulations.

A Zamano spokesperson said those UK breaches related to historic issues, and the complaints received by Comreg last year were "a tiny percentage of their subscriber base in Ireland".

He declined to give details of how many customers complained directly to them or received refunds.

I wonder if the Vodafone 'overcharge' refund debacle has any thing to do with this......was at least some of the 'over charge' really an unauthorised charge?

'Vodafone said it had identified the error in December in an internal audit sparked by a Comreg review of premium rate numbers'