Crackdown on dodgy mobile deals Ofcom is cracking down on dodgy mobile deals and is making mobile operators responsible for the dubious practises some retailers and resellers engage in on their behalf. Companies which break the rules face fines of up to ten per cent of turnover. The industry has been plagued with complaints about the issue of cashback deals …
"Retailers are warned to ensure customers intend and understand the contracts they sign up to and are given all the information they need."
Ensure the customers understand the contracts. How the fuck are retailers supposed to be responsible for that? The very act of signing a contract is supposed to indicate that you have read and understand its terms, if you don't understand it you shouldn't sign it. What are the retailers supposed to do, refuse to let thick people sign up?
Where contracts are involved I think things are pretty well sorted already. It's where there is no contract to read and sign that things can get a bit dodgy. You know the one where opening the box supposedly means you agree to the terms and conditions that you can't read until you've opened the box.
Got to agree with Grease Monkey on this one - there HAS to be some sense of personal responsibility involved. If you don't understand it, don't think it's a good deal, think you can get it better somewhere else, whatever - then don't sign the agreement.
People complain about the "Nanny State" but until the average Joe-Public assumes some responsibility then we're going to go deeper and deeper into it.
I recently purchased a new phone contract with Orange offering 12 months half price line rental. When my bills came through charging full whack I investigated further.
Turns out it's not half price line rental at all but I have to follow some very confusing repayment guidelines where I need to send in copies of my bill to the company I bought it from (not orange) at specific intervals to recieve a check in the post. The interval is different depending on ambiguously defined contract lengths and amounts. I asked support exactly what bracket I fall into and the simply directed me back at the FAQ page.
If I am late sending the specific bill to them or have been late on even a single contract payment then I forfeit the cashback offer. Whats funny is that they do both cashback and reduced price line rental but it's simply two differant words for the same thing.
I was asked to have a look at a cashback contract once, to see if I could understand when exactly the invoices received had to be sent back to claim the cashback. The company was a subsidiary of CPW.
Needless to say, the terms were so ambiguous, it was impossible to determine which day of the month the cashback claim had to be received by CPW, as these varied throughtout the contract period. Get one wrong, and all future claims would be rejected. Naturally, all calls to CPW were redirected to a website FAQ which was anything but helpful.
I understand that if all cashbacks were sent in by consumers, the companies concerned would go bust, as effectively all calls / phones would be for free. But to deliberately make the T&Cs so confusing and ambiguous as to make it impossible to adhere to them, is wrong. And the cashback companies know that most consumers just won't bother complaining.
Are you mad?
1. Look at any standard contract and it's written by the legal monkeys. It's written to protect themselves, not to educate the customer. After you've got through a page of "definitions" - "a customer is someone who is a customer of the store, but not on a tuesday, or where other naming has occured...", etc, etc.
A customer has no hope of reading and understanding a contract without a pocket lawyer.
2. It's common for companies to put terms in contracts which are illegal, or unfair.
What should the customer do then? How do they know which is illegal and which is unfair?
Contracts should state in plain simple English, the important concepts - 2 year contract, a fee of £x if you cancel contract, etc.
There should then be baseline T&Cs for all mobile contracts which can be assumed by the customer and company.
And failing that, if a situation occurs outside these, it assumed be in the customer's favour.
Ahhh those wonderful unlimited deals.
I was on Virgin Mobile and considering getting a new phone on contract with them. They were (amongst other things) offering 'unlimited' web browsing via my phone for about 30p a day.
The catch?
Ahh that'll be the 25MB (yes MEGABYTE) limit per day and an over limit charge of about £4 per MEGABYTE!
Suffice to say, I can easily use more than that on Facebook, e-mail, streaming etc so I went to Three.
With my contract on Three (which works out cheaper than Virgin Mobile with a better phone) I get unlimtied texts which is really something like 3,200 texts a month which I know I wouldn't get near to using, 75 mins of calls and unlimited data which is actually 1GB. Okay not unlimited at all but I'd be hard pressed to use 1GB on my phone and I'm not paying an additional 30p a day to use any of the data allowance.
Rob
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