Ofcom may have to intervene again in the name of TCF
Ho, ho, ho – I’ve received my first card and a huge fir tree has sprung up in Leadenhall market. Even the very worst of dullards will have realised that Christmas is on its way.
Offering something of a distraction, however, has been the struggle that I’ve been having with both my wife’s mobile and my landline telephone company concerning a contract that I never knew existed.
Having been a long standing customer with the phone company (that will remain nameless), I had somehow managed to sign up to a new landline contract with them upon moving house 18 months ago. Silly me, I thought I was informing them of my new address.
The chickens, or should that be the more seasonal turkeys, have finally come home to roost now that I want to change suppliers.
Christmas represents a peak time for mobile phone manufacturers and retailers. Given how mobile phones have captured the UK public’s imagination, the mind boggles at how many customers get landed with contracts that they don’t understand, want or even need as the closing time for the shops on Christmas Eve arrives.
How many of these sales involve the offer of three months 'free' insurance, where the retailers count on the majority of users forgetting to cancel this cover after the initial period is up and the consumer then has to start paying for the protection (something which I never did)?
How many consumers just put their experience down to bad luck and choose not to pursue a genuine complaint?
Trying to cancel my wife’s mobile (which was in my name) was almost impossible. Why is it that these companies make it so easy to sign up to their services, but so darn difficult to cancel? Were all of these companies FSA regulated we could expect a few to trip and fall on the hurdles of the treating customers fairly initiative.
The Carphone Warehouse, for example, found out to its cost that it doesn’t pay to treat your telesales insurance customers unfairly after the FSA fined it £245,000 in 2006 for breaching ICOB rules.
My seasonal wish is that the telephone regulator Ofcom’s voluntary industry code of practice for mobile phone providers, which is designed to stamp out misleading sales and marketing practices, really bites.
Ofcom has warned that if the industry initiative fails then formal intervention will follow – now doesn’t that sound familiar?!
