The European Commission has reported that over 80 per cent of websites that offer mobile ringtones are suspected of being in breach of EU consumer protection rules and that 14 Irish sites are set to be investigated.
An EU-wide investigation into 558 websites offering services such as ringtones indicates that 466 of them require further checks to establish whether they breach legislation.
The investigation was undertaken following complaints from consumers who had unwittingly signed up for long-term contracts while downloading an individual ringtone.
In Ireland, 17 out of 18 websites checked were found to need further action. Fourteen out of 18 of these are considered to be potential cases under EU Consumer Protection Cooperation rules, and these will now be investigated by the National Consumer Agency (NCA) to see if enforcement action is appropriate. Such action could include seeking undertakings, issuing compliance notices, seeking prohibition orders and / or prosecution through the Courts.
EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva is promising that action will be taken against websites which don’t provide adequate information on the services they offer.
“Far too many people are falling victim to costly surprises from mysterious charges, fees and ring tone subscriptions they learn about for the first time when they see their mobile phone bill,” said Ms Kuneva.
The investigation uncovered a number of irregularities including unclear or incomplete price information; a failure to explain that customers are signing up to a subscription service; and insufficient contact details of the trader. In addition, the study found that on some websites, key information is hidden in very small print or is hard to find.
Almost 50 per cent of the websites reviewed had some irregularity related to the information about the offer’s price. On many websites prices and related charges and fees were not clearly indicated or not referred to at all - until the consumer is invoiced via their phone bill.
Often, prices did not include all taxes, and it was unclear whether customers were signing up to a subscription service.
Over 70 per cent of all the websites checked lacked some of the information required to contact the trader - such as company name or address - while over 60 per cent of sites checked presented the information in a misleading way.
More than 495 million mobile phones are owned by Europeans, and last year ringtones were estimated to make up 29 per cent of the overall “mobile content” market in Europe, a 10 per cent rise on 2006.
The value of European ring tone sales in 2007 was an estimated €691 million.
