PRESS RELEASE

A ONE MILLION EURO FINE IMPOSED BY THE ICA ON VODAFONE FOR ADDITIONAL SERVICES

The ICA imposed a one million Euro fine on Vodafone Italia S.p.A. for the non-requested additional service “Vodafone Exclusive”, finding that the offer entailed an extra cost as to what agreed upon, infringing the Consumer Code. As of 31 August 2015, according to the ICA’s investigations, the company had been carrying out the following conducts:

• the automatic activation of the service “Vodafone Exclusive” without customers’ explicit opt-in consent;
• the automatic charge of the related monthly cost (1.90 Euros) and the refusal to refund customers for the automatic activation of the non-requested service.

On the basis of the ICA’s controls, the mentioned service falls within the scope of additional services in the light of various considerations, among which:

• surfing via 4G network is allowed only to who is provided with the necessary technical conditions;
• the possibility to have 2 cinema tickets at the cost of one involved only a restricted number of cinemas participating in the promotion;
• access to the specially provided customers service number, 193, was merely additional to the already existing customers service number.

Therefore, the ICA decided that the company had been carrying out a not very transparent conduct as regards both the activation of the service and the modality for charging related costs. In fact, consumers were not placed in the condition to realize that “Vodafone Exclusive” had actually been activated on their mobile devices and that the monthly costs for the service were withdrawn systematically from their residual credit. According to the ICA’s opinion, such conduct infringes article 65 of the Consumer Code, with reference to customers that signed a contract after 13 June 2014. Therefore, the company was fined and obliged to terminate the mentioned conduct.

The ICA also obliged Vodafone to publish an extract of the Authority’s measure on the company’s home page for thirty consecutive days, providing for a specially devoted icon titled “Communication for consumers’ protection”.

Rome, 16 March 2016