Premium-rate mobile complaints fall in wake of new rules and EU sweep

The results of the EU sweep, in which EU member states coordinated an assessment of mobile phone services. It found that four in five websites selling premium-rate mobile services breached consumer protection laws.

In July 2008 when that sweep was conducted PPP received 1,981 complaints. Last month it received 746, a decrease of 62% over 15 months.

In January of this year PPP tightened regulation of premium-rate mobile services. It introduced new rules which forced providers to outline clearly to customers of expensive services exactly what charges they are accepting.

"Any consumer joining a subscription service which costs more than £4.50 per week must first receive a free confirmation text message detailing the cost and conditions of the service. The consumer cannot be charged until they have confirmed their subscription by replying to that text," under the new rules, it said.

It also said that pricing information should be transparent and that users should be able to immediately opt out by texting STOP to the service provider.

The fall in complaints is from a high in July 2008. In that month PPP said that there had been a steady and "extraordinary increase" in complaints about mobile services, which by then had increased by more than 100% on the previous year. It had fined operators more in the first three months of 2008 than in the whole of 2007, it said.

The European Commission said that since its sweep in July 2008 70% of the sites it identified as problematic are now compliant or defunct. It said that 301 sites were investigated and, of which 159 have changed and 54 have closed.

It said that national regulators would continue to work on the outstanding cases.

"The three main problems found were: unclear pricing (for example, information was missing or incomplete); failure to provide complete trader information; and misleading advertising, in particular, advertising ringtones as 'free' where the consumer is in fact tied into a paying subscription," said a Commission statement on the results of the sweep.

“This EU wide investigation was a direct response to hundreds of complaints coming in from parents and consumers from many different EU countries," said EU Consumer Commissioner Meglena Kuneva. "Young people should not have to fall victim to scams like misleading advertising that lure them into ringtone subscriptions they thought were free. And parents should not find nasty surprises in their phone bill, when their children by accident have signed up to more than they have bargained for."

"These results show that EU wide enforcement co-operation can make a huge difference in cleaning up a market for consumers. This kind of joint enforcement action is where EU consumer policy will focus a lot of efforts in the future," she said.

The Commission said that over half of the sites examined were targeted at children and used devices such as cartoon figures or television characters to entice them to sign up to services.

All but four of the 43 UK sites identified in the sweep required investigation. Many related to services that were in fact defunct, and the rest were subject to PPP investigations and enforcement. Some are ongoing, PPP said.

Mobile content trade body the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) said that the industry would benefit from more consistent regulation, possibly on an EU-wide basis.

"We would welcome discussion with the EU on the regulation of mobile services, said Suhail Bhat, Policy and Initiatives Director, Mobile Entertainment Forum. "The regulations for the same content vary tremendously and are applied inconsistently in different Member States. In many cases, there are multiple regulators with remits over both the advertising and content of services. As convergence becomes a reality, more discussion is needed to ensure consumers continue to enjoy mobile content services.”