Tired of getting a nasty surprise at the end of the month when you open your cell phone bill and realise how much all those subscription services cost you? Of course it is your responsibility to read the small print of anything you sign up for, but recently there have been some horror stories about the costs people have accumulated.
The Wireless Application Service Providers’ Association (WASPA), has stepped up to the plate and amended its Code of Conduct to help prevent subscribers running up ridiculous bills. The code is also supported by South Africa’s three main mobile operators Vodacom, MTN and Cell C.
These amounts could come from a ringtone subscription service, for example, where you can end up paying up to R50 weekly for one ringtone which you downloaded months ago! You could also end up paying a lot of money entering competitions, where each SMS costs around R10.
The addition to the code stipulates that service providers need to notify customers by SMS when they have reached a threshold of R300. The consumer will then have to provide their consent before being billed for further use of a particular service.
Quoted on ITWeb, Neil Hutchinson, the vice-chairman of WASPA, said: “We were finding that people were finding large debits against their accounts at the end of each month – their billing was exceedingly higher than what they thought it was. We came to a conclusion that consumers need to be told about the status of their bill and asked if they would like to continue with the service.”
Consumers on the MyBroadBand forum seem pleased with WASPA’s initiative. They hope that the service will be strictly enforced, and that there will be hefty penalties for non-compliance.
We certainly hope that these measures will continue to provide much-needed protection for consumers – saving them money and potential future hassles. However, consumers must be aware that it is also their responsibility to be always read “the fine print” before subscribing to a service, downloading content or entering a competition.
