"Hungary's National Communications Authority (NCA) imposed a HUF 20 million (EUR 82,220) fine on mobile carrier Vodafone this week, saying the company failed to give adequate billing data to its pre-paid customers.According to law, mobile carriers are obliged to provide detailed calling and billing data to pre-paid customers in case of complaints and to post-paid customers on request. The details must contain the numbers called, the starting time and duration of the calls, as well as the tariff (total and per unit).
The NCA checked in the summer whether Vodafone complied with the regulations or not and found that while the carrier doid give detailed billing information to pre-paid subscribers who made a complaint, but despite previous warnings by the watchdog, Vodafone still failed to detail the tariff of the calls.
The first time the NCA warned Vodafone to provide the legally compulsory data also to pre-paid subscribers was in 2005 and found in 2007 that while the company did give details on calls, but not as the law stipulates it. In December last year Vodafone said it would be able to comply only after technical upgrades, the duration of which it did not specify.
The NCA made 12 “test purchases" of pre-paid cards this summer, and then launched complains at Vodafone, requesting detailed data on their calls and the respective tariffs. The latter, however, were still missing from the records. Vodafone only provided a table of tariffs, based on which the customers could calculate for themselves what they paid for each call.
Vodafone claimed an average customer who “thinks logically" should have no problem calculating the tariff units, but the NCA did not accept this reasoning and imposed a HUF 20 m fine on the carrier."
Source: Portfolio Online Financial Journal
18.09.2008