He learned about the case. As he writes, the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection receives further complaints against Vectra and its operator, Multimedia Polska, regarding the increase in fees. As a reminder, Vectra increased the amount of fees for customers in January, and Multimedia Polska in February this year, referring to the so-called inflation clauses, which pissed off customers.
Inflation clause. UOKiK receives complaints about increases in subscription prices
Inflation clauses are controversial provisions that have been included in contracts with customers at several operators. They give companies the opportunity to increase the amounts included in the contracts by the official inflation rate, which has long been at the level of several percent. In theory, the clauses are supposed to protect companies from trouble in a situation where inflation will remain at a high level for a long time, which is the case now. Both Vectra and Multimedia Polska took advantage of this provision at the beginning of the year, after the Central Statistical Office announced that last year’s official inflation reading was 14.4 percent. The amounts paid by customers for services in these enterprises have also increased exactly by this amount.
Therefore, the fees increased from a few zlotys at the most in the case of cheaper subscriptions to as much as PLN 25-30 in the case of recipients who opted for the richest packages. And this, of course, did not please the customers. The Wirtualne Media service found out that UOKiK had received 96 complaints against Vectra and 36 against Multimedia Polska since the beginning of the year. Much less frequently, customers complained to the office about other, smaller operators (two complaints against Servcom and one against Nette).
Controversial clauses hit customers
Some operators decided to introduce inflation clauses, but not all of them later took advantage of this option. and the increase was many times lower (4% of the amount in the contract) than the inflation value. We still do not know the position of UOKiK on this type of provisions in contracts. In November, officials noted that such changes to fixed-term obligations may lead to “shifting the consequences of the changing economic situation onto mobile network users” – reminds the portal. However, UOKiK has not completed the explanatory proceedings in this case and does not reveal at what stage it is.
Source: Gazeta
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