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We'll take your silence as a 'yes, thank you!' |
| Imagine if companies routinely sent us unsolicited offers to buy things, and if we didn't get back to them to say "no, thanks", they assumed we wanted them, and went ahead and billed us for them. Well, this used to be the case not so long ago. I remember one large retail company sending its account holders offers to take up an add-on insurance product, and those who ignored the SMS or one-liner on their bills found that they were suddenly "signed up", their silence interpreted as consent. Outrageous! In 2005 the Department of Trade and Industry outlawed this practice, which is referred to as inertia selling or negative option marketing. It's illegal for any company to supply goods or services without the "unequivocal authorisation" of a consumer. The recently passed Consumer Protection Act backs this up. It states that a supplier must not offer to supply goods or services or to modify a contract - that is, add things to it, such as an insurance policy - on the basis that the goods or services will be supplied, or the contract altered "unless the consumer declines such offer…" Any such deal or alteration is void, the act states. Companies ought not to be at all confused or ignorant about the fact that negative option marketing is an illegal practice. It simply must not happen. Ever. So I was more than a little surprised recently when I received complaints from Virgin Mobile customers, alleging that they'd fallen prey to negative option marketing. They didn't call it that, but they instinctively knew it was wrong. About two weeks ago, Guillauma Rabie of Cape Town wrote to me to say Virgin Mobile had begun adding R19.99 (R17.54 plus VAT) for itemised billing on two of her contracts. "What is the point of signing a contract for a set amount if they can add services when they want to?" she asked. The SMS sent to Rabie's daughter and domestic worker read: "If you do not want itemised billing, SMS 'Stop' to xxx." Rabie said: "I feel they should have sent an SMS which said if you DO want itemised billing, SMS YES to…" And she'd be right. Neither of the recipients responded because they weren't sure what the SMS was about. "Then I was charged R19.99 extra on each contract, and they both suddenly started getting itemised bills," Rabie said. "I sent e-mails to three different departments and got no response." Only when she logged her complaint on a consumer website did Virgin Mobile reverse the charges and cancel the itemised billing. Another Virgin Mobile subscriber, Stephen Voget of Constantia, doesn't recall getting the "do you want itemised billing?" SMS, but did notice that his March bill came with six-pages of itemised calls. And under "value-added services" there was an itemised billing charge of R17.54, to which VAT was added. "When I phoned Virgin Mobile, I was told that an SMS had been sent to me asking me if I wanted this 'value-added service' and because I didn't respond they just assumed I wanted to pay an extra R19.99! "When I demanded that they refund me and reinstate my agreed contractual price, they initially refused, but eventually, after a heated argument, agreed to 'send an e-mail to the accounts department'." A copy of Voget's Virgin Mobile contract application, signed in September, shows that he did not opt for itemised billing. When I sent Voget's complaint to Virgin Mobile SA chief executive Steve Bailey, he said Voget was billed in error, and he believed that to be an isolated case. He confirmed that Voget had never been sent an SMS about itemised billing. But when the Rabie case surfaced, Bailey said he felt the need to elaborate on the issue. "Some months ago, we migrated our entire billing system across from a previous platform to our current billing system," he said. "During the migration process we were forced to upload the data pertaining to a large number of customers' itemised billing, and during this process portions of customer data were corrupted. "As a result we implemented a campaign to customers to verify the data we had, to ensure that the correct customers are charged and receive the service. "Our intention was to allow customers who were incorrectly added during the migration process the option of notifying us in the most convenient and efficient manner." Unfortunately, that manner has been outlawed. A lack of response cannot be interpreted as consent or authorisation. In the absence of a subscriber's "unequivocal authorisation" for itemised billing, the assumption should have been that they didn't want it. And let's not forget that Voget didn't even get that SMS, and he, like Rabie, declined the itemised billing option when signing the original contract. Just more than a third of Virgin Mobile's subscribers (36 percent) are paying for itemised billing every month. While recognising that some customers may still be "billed incorrectly" for itemised billing, Bailey said he did not believe that many subscribers were affected, "based on the number of complaints we have been receiving". Or could it be that some are just not checking their bills properly? By Wendy Knowler The Star 01/07/09e1 Click here to respond to this article - Your responses will get vetted and printed on "Have your Say" Click here if you would like to be alerted to new Crime Awareness articles. |
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