The end of UPC Polska. More and more customers complain about the connection to Play

At the end of August 2023, the Play and UPC Polska companies were legally merged. The merger also resulted in the rebranding of the UPC brand, which completely disappeared from the Polish market after 23 years of operation. In September, existing UPC customers started receiving e-mails with information about the change of service provider.

We kindly inform you that from September 1, 2023, the provider of telecommunications services and the administrator of your personal data under contracts concluded with UPC Polska sp. z o. o. is: P4 sp. z o. o., ul. Wynalazek 1, 02-677 Warszawa

– said the message.

Importantly, all existing UPC customer contracts remain in force unchanged. Therefore, the scope of services, price, contract terms and expiry date are identical. Therefore, customers were not given the opportunity to break the obligation before it expired. Such action would result in “the need to return a proportional part of the relief” that was granted when signing the contract.

UPC merged with Play. Customers complain to the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection

Not all UPC customers liked the completed merger. l, already in September, the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection received the first complaints in this matter. Their authors complained, among others: to worse quality of services after connecting to Play. In recent weeks, even more complaints of this type have appeared, as confirmed by the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection.

The Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) received a total of a dozen or so consumer complaints related to problems following the merger of Play and UPC. They concern individual problems, e.g. decline in the quality of services, divergent information from consultants of both companies, inability to take advantage of P4 promotional offers by former UPC customers.

– explains Maciej Chmielowski from the Communication Department of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection in an interview with Wirtualnemedia.pl. However, Play officially denies that the merger with UPC had a negative impact on the quality of services provided – according to the company, the network operates properly.

Thanks to many years of investment in state-of-the-art infrastructure, we have a broadband network that ensures reliable service quality even in the event of exceptional needs of our customers and extraordinary situations, as exemplified by the pandemic. Our network works properly and planned works are carried out during the hours of least network traffic and we make every effort to ensure that they last as short as possible.

– explained the Play press office in a recently published press release.

If the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection initiates proceedings and finds violations of consumer or competition law, the Office may impose a maximum fine on a given company of up to 10%. annual revenues, although it may also be limited only to an official warning.

P4 announced its intention to take over UPC Polska in September 2021, but the transaction was formally finalized in April 2022. Since then, the integration of both brands has been carried out, which ended with the abandonment of the UPC Polska name in favor of Play. However, several months earlier, the P4 operator decided to gradually close UPC showrooms in Poland.