Vodafone wants more clarity for customers with paid SMS services

Vodafone advocates introducing stricter rules for providers of paid SMS services. For example, it should become clearer to customers that they are going to purchase a paid service, making abuse more difficult.

A spokesperson for the telecom provider made the statements in a broadcast of Kassa, together with the Foundation for Mobile Services Codes of Conduct, a partnership of telecom and content providers. According to the providers, it should become clearer to customers that they sign up for a paid service. This can be done by adding an extra screen that clearly shows what the customer is signing up for.

Another measure is texting the word ‘pay’ to sign up for a subscription. This should make it more difficult to deceive people: typically users have to text ‘ok’ or something similar to sign up, but typing ‘pay’ would put extra emphasis on providing a paid service.

There is agreement about the new rules within the Mobile Services Code of Conduct Foundation. She expects these to come into effect within a few weeks. Content providers must comply with the new rules if they want to offer their services via SMS. The paid text messages are then processed via the telecom providers’ account. Many people complain that they receive bills with large amounts of money caused by expensive text messages that they unsuspectingly signed up for.