In the US, every sixth mobile user gets some ‘mystery charges’ in his/her bill. In India, we can say, billing ‘mystery charges’ and thus duping every subscriber have become ‘birthright’ of mobile operators, both old and new entrants.
Every month, a number of post-paid subscribers are billed some 'dubious' amount under the pretext of various charges. Take for example, a Bengaluru-based IT expert, found a sudden rise in his monthly bill from Bharti Airtel. After enquiring, he found out that the company forgot to bill him in previous months due to technical error in their systems and hence want him to pay it now. (Read more..Airtel calls for 'dues' that it says it forgot to bill earlier http://www.moneylife.in/article/78/11071.html ) However, Airtel is not the only one who is asking subscribers to pay some 'mystery charges', many other mobile services provider (MSPs) are also doing the same. Unfortunately, in India, there is no remedy to overcome this duping from the MSPs.
"In India, about 95% of total mobile subscribers use pre-paid connection and they never receive any kind of account statement from the MSPs. As per the guidelines, for an amount of Rs50 and above, the MSPs are required to provide a detailed statement to a pre-paid subscriber, if asked. However, either they don't provide it or even if they do, the statement does not give details like balance in account, call duration, SMS data or active VAS and its charges," said Achintya Mukherjee, honorary joint secretary, Bombay Telephone Users Association.
Mr Mukherjee said after writing to his MSP Reliance Communication for over six months, finally they provided him a statement for his pre-paid connection, which just have a list of numbers called and nothing else. Even, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) failed to lay down any specific format for the account statement to be given to pre-paid subscribers, he added.
In the US, more than 30 million (3 crore) mobile subscribers told the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that they found 'surprise charges' on their phone bills. This means one out of every six US mobile phone subscriber is receiving bills with 'mystery charges'. After getting caught, Verizon Wireless, a mobile services provider had to pay $25 million, the largest voluntary fine in FCC history, for charging their subscribers with millions of bogus 'mystery charges'.
Now the FCC has proposed new rules that will make it mandatory for all mobile carriers to send a text or voicemail to users if they are about to go over their monthly usage for voice, data or SMS. No wonder, MSPs are fighting tooth and nail either to block the new rules or water it down.
The European Union already requires cellular companies to send these kinds of heads-up alerts to customers approaching their usage limits.
However, no such rules or guidelines exist in India to regulate 'mystery charges' in mobile bills. To start with, every MSP in India will ask you to pay the bill first and then ask for reimbursement or waiver in next bill. Secondly, you can try calling the customer service number of times, only to get more frustrated, since they will not understand what you are saying or your call will get disconnected automatically. If you insist on talking with anyone senior, then they will keep you on hold for many more minutes and in case you manages to speak with somebody senior, he will promise to look into the matter and revert, which never happens.
After this episode with the MSP, you may want to complaint to the regulator, the TRAI If you are lucky or are able to persuade the concerned person from TRAI, they may notice your complaint. What follows is a typical to procedures that rules our government offices. TRAI will send your complaint to the concerned MSP, the MSP will send a routine reply and the matter rests.
According to Mr Mukherjee, beyond playing the postman's role, TRAI has rarely come through meaningfully. "They (the TRAI) have telecom experts as advisors but each has a restricted role and even more important, little pro-active role or capacity to be so," he added.
The question remains, what a subscriber, who is billed 'mystery charges' every month should do. Not much, we can say. You can write to the concerned customer care, nodal officer and even to TRAI, but whether they will acknowledge the error and rectify the same, there is no assurance.
A few days ago, Dr KC Chakrabarty, deputy governor, Reserve Bank of India, while speaking at a banking seminar said that technology has the potential to extend, in a cost effective manner, the penetrative reach of services and products to a large section of the excluded society. However, technological advances failed to reduce the transaction cost for retail customers, he said.
This is true not only for banking services but also to every other service, including mobile. However, in case of mobile services, network (signal) availability, value added services (VAS) and last but not least, various charges that a subscriber needs to pay or which gets deducted automatically from his pre-paid account have become constant headache.
Compared with other MSPs, Tata Teleservices comes out with something innovative. Any subscriber of Tata Indicom, can visit their website and post his/her grievances directly to the company's managing director and head of operations. The company says: "We pledge to address every bill dispute within 72 hours failing which we will compensate our customers with Rs25/- for every additional day taken to resolve the complaint."
The company also compensate its subscribers for call drops and allows registration of a call back if they does not answer you call within 90 seconds. For any VAS, it offers free trial.
Unfortunately, Tata Indicom does not have any answer or solution to block unsolicited commercial calls or messages. The writer has been trying for the same since past 4-5 years, and has written to every concerned official from Tata Indicom without any luck yet.
Hope someday in future we may have the same rules, regulations that are followed in the US and the EU, which may give some respite to end users. — Moneylife Digital Team