Poland’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) has pressed charges against UPC Polska and the operator is at risk of being fined up to 10% of its turnover.
According to UOKIK, UPC Polska have been charged with a fee for additional TV channels and higher internet speeds despite the fact they had no ordered these services.
Its president Tomasz Chrostny went on to say: “Charging fees for products and services not ordered is inadmissible. We should remember that launching any services, adding them against a fee to a previously concluded agreement must be performed upon an explicit and informed consent of consumers and absence of a response does not constitute such a consent. The UPC Polska company has imposed on its customers the shape of products and a higher price for them and then obligated them to take up actions aimed at blocking the changes for which they had not applied”.
UOKiK adds that the situation was not changed by the fact that UPC Polska enabled its customers to opt out of new services within six months free of any charge. An entrepreneur should not unilaterally change the scope of the services rendered to launch new ones and then require of consumers to pay a higher subscription fee for products not ordered or opt out of the new terms and conditions.
Broadband TV News notes that UPC Polska is part of the Play Group owned by France’s iliad.
