The country?s second largest GSM operator, Vodafone Essar, suffered a major setback on Thursday with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) directing it to refund within 15 days to all the consumers charges for value-added services in cases where the services were provided without explicit consent of the subscribers.
In tandem with the Trai guidelines issued in October last year, which stated that all service providers must get an explicit consent from their users before implementing any value added services and must maintain a record of the same.
Thursday?s direction has been issued to a second mobile provider since then. Idea Cellular Ltd was the first service provider to receive a notice from the regulator last year in October.
A Trai statement said, ?The Authority had been in correspondence with the service provider in these matters for quite a long time and the service provider admitted technical error?.
The statement notes that based on the explanation furnished by the service provider, it is strongly felt that Vodafone Essar had not sought an explicit consent from the consumers particularly when the consumers denied having given any such explicit consent.
The Trai guideline had directed the service providers to provide the facility to unsubscribe any value added service through telephone calls, SMS, e-mail, fax or any other means.
The direction mentioned that in case of any offer for any value added services made to the customer in writing or through SMS, fax or e-mail, such offer shall contain all relevant details of the service offered, including the charges thereof, and before activation of such service the explicit consent of the customer shall be obtained through telephone, SMS, fax, e-mail or by other electronic means.
The authority made it mandatory for the service providers to acknowledge the consent of the user through SMS before or immediately after activation of the value added service and the consent should be reflected in the next bill issued to the customer.