The ACCC has been condemning the mobile telecommunications industry throughout the week in relation to mobile premium services and their misleading advertising and sales practices, and now another adamant opposition has entered the ring to reinforce the message.
Consumer advocate group Choice, has come out and publicly attacked dodgy mobile companies that provide services like ring tones, wallpapers and horoscopes to unwilling consumers, in the midst of renewed interest about the topic, after the ACCC took action against two overseas providers earlier in the week.
Choice wants new safeguards to be implemented for these subscription services and want a “double opt-in” system to be mandatory.
According to this system a text message would have to sent to the consumer outlining the terms and conditions. Once these have been read, the consumer can reply opting whether to receive the service or not.
Choice has commented that this would ensure consumers’ rights and obligations were clearly spelt out.
Choice has also outlined some interesting facts from a recent survey, which addresses how half the 431 people surveyed unwilling received unsolicited messages regularly and two thirds had trouble cancelling the service. While 50 per cent also claimed to not know how to cancel services or attempted to cancel and had no response.
Pressure has definitely been put heavily on the providers of these services, and it will be interesting to see how the providers respond to all this criticism.