You have to have a thousand eyes with the bills, to show what has happened to a Vodafone user who turned out to be the president of Facua. And it is that, due to a series of irregularities with the collection of third-party servicesthe operator has been fined 20,100 euros.
Olga Ruiz is the president of Facua in Spain and, as we read in Diario de Sevilla, after reviewing his monthly bill in March 2021, he detected that he had been charged two unauthorized charges of 4.5 euros plus VAT for payments to third parties. However, Olga had years ago restricted these payments to services in a specific way, so the charges should never have been made.
When he found out, Facua Sevilla sent a request to the company to cancel the invoice and return the amount charged in error. It’s funny because Vodafone admitted that it had been improperly charged, but in April and May the same charges happened again. In case you’re wondering, the Third Party Payments service allows you to purchase services outside of Vodafone such as apps and content charged to your monthly bill.
When it happened again, reusing the personal data for the collection of these third-party services, the case was raised to the General Directorate of Consumption of the Junta de Andalucía. In addition, it was no longer just because of Olga’s case, but because of different charges that the association had found in different internet forums in which users reported similar unauthorized payments.
Consumption demanded information from Vodafone in September and October 2021, considering that the operator was hindering the process. In February 2022, a file was opened stating that Vodafone had “breached the obligation to guarantee its subscriber the right to disconnect certain services” and, therefore, a fine of 1,000 euros was imposed.
However, considering the alleged impediment of the case, the Administration imposed another fine of 32,501 euros which, after the 60% reduction and after accepting responsibility for not acting properly, has been reduced to 20,100 euros.
We have contacted Vodafone to know your position regarding this ruling and we are waiting for your response. When we have it, we will update this article.
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