Stampa

THE AUTHORITY DEMANDS GREATER CLARITY IN COMMERCIAL PROPOSALS BY TELEPHONY SERVICE-PROVIDERS


PRESS RELEASE



PRESS RELEASE

The Authority demands greater clarity in commercial proposals by telephony service-providers


The new commercial offerings being continuously put out by the mobile and fixed telephony service-providers have given attracted an increasing number of complaints about misleading advertising. In many instances the Competition Authority has found one or more aspects of the advertisements to be in violation of the law, and hence misleading and lacking in transparency. On other occasions the Authority has considered the message to be misleading where the tariff conditions were fully stated but the calculation of the costs of the service was complicated.
         In view of the proliferation of these commercial offerings the telephone service-providers must be placed under more stringent obligations.
The Authority has emphasized that complete information is the minimum requirement to be imposed on advertisers, as well as unambiguity on telephony services, for which the providers are disseminating an increasing range of offerings with highly complex tariff structures: the actual price of the service comprises items that the consumers have to calculate for themselves in order to decide whether or not the proposed tariff is in fact convenient.
This need has also been confirmed by the thinking underlying Community law that setting accurate, transparent and unambiguous selling prices is the way to better inform consumers by enabling them to assess and compare prices of different offerings, and then take a decision based on simple comparisons.
The Authority therefore deems it indispensable henceforth for advertisers to ensure that information on the price of services is not only complete but also unambiguous. This includes - for example - not quoting pre-tax prices and providing information, visual and audio, on all the components used to calculate the charges and on the tariff-setting mechanism.

Rome, 26 June 2000