Watchdog clamps down on mobile service vendors

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The watchdog for premium phone-paid services said it would clamp down immediately on vendors who did not offer easy get-outs as it launches an eight-week consultation on measures to improve business practices and boost customer trust.

"Any failure will mean we will use our emergency powers," PhonepayPlus Chairman Alistair Graham told a news conference. "We've got an immediate problem in the mobile sector and we want to get to grips with it."

Faster, third-generation telecoms networks and new devices such as Apple's iPhone are making premium-rate mobile services more available and attractive while increasing the need to improve business practices, PhonepayPlus said.

Sales of mobile premium-rate services rose 20 percent to 464 million pounds.

Yet the watchdog said a lack of trust meant most consumers never used such services and noted overall sales including landline and mobile services fell 10 percent to 1.07 billion pounds in the year to end-March.

Britain was hit by a series of scandals last year surrounding TV shows and quizzes that encouraged viewers to call in using premium-rate numbers but then misled them about the results, for example by keeping the competition open after they had chosen the winner.

Customer complaints in the past year more than doubled to over 8,000.

PhonepayPlus said consumers were too often signed up for subscriptions without realising it - and found it hard to unsubscribe.

They also received unwanted and sometimes expensive marketing messages, while pricing was unclear.

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