Subscription services are still pretty much alive and today with all the regulations in place there is still issues,people are getting shafted and people are not fully aware of what signing up to these services entail. Often is the case these questions still today pop up on forums where people have been shafted and all we can do is report,then its up to others to act Comreg being one of them.
€390,000 has been refunded to 12,000 customers which is great news and hopefully will send a clear message to such services.
Press Release
The Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) has secured refunds totalling €390,000 for 12,000 customers of Dragonfly Mobile Ltd., a provider of Premium Rate Services (PRS) following non-compliance with the PRS Code of Conduct and breaches of its licence. When complaints about Dragonfly’s “Prize Club” service first came to light, ComReg required Mobile Network Operators and other intermediaries to block access to the shortcodes involved and to withhold all interconnection payments and other revenues related to these associated short code numbers. In May 2014, ComReg found that Dragonfly was not in compliance with various provisions of the PRS Code of Practice and therefore in breach of its PRS Licence. As a result, Dragonfly was required to make a commitment to ComReg to remedy the non-compliance and make refunds to affected end users. Dragonfly failed to make this commitment in the specified time frame and so ComReg has revoked the Dragonfly PRS licences and has also withdrawn the allocated 57741 and 57575 short codes. In order to protect consumers, ComReg agreed with all the mobile network operators and intermediaries that the withheld interconnection payments would be used to refund all charges incurred on the Prize Club PRS to all affected subscribers. Following this, a total of €390,000 has been refunded to more than 12,000 end users. Jeremy Godfrey, ComReg Commissioner said: “In this case, ComReg worked with the industry to ensure the interests of consumers were protected. ComReg was able to use the laws available to it in order to stop consumers’ money reaching the PRS provider who was in breach of its obligations. Due to the significant efforts of the mobile operators and other intermediaries money was refunded to consumers. ComReg has a statutory role to protect consumers and we will continue to ensure that all licensed PRS operators comply with the PRS Code of Conduct.”