Location/place: Ahmedabad, Gujarat
Name of company/service: TATA DOCOMO
Many unsolicited advertisements are displayed from such companies which have tie up with tata docomo itself, and upon clicking such ads accidentally or unwilling (these ads float on your screen, if you use touchscreen, it is obvious that you will accidentally press on the space where these ads are displayed), balance got deducted in no time. In this way, I have lost more that 100 Rs. I would also like to inform that upon clicking such advertisements & at the same time pressing back button or cancelling the same process, would not stop deduction from your balance. I would like to make one logical statement here that clicking on such ads will never initiate any kind of downloading any wallpaper or service. The charges should be based on the complete downloading of any component and not on the basis of just clicking. You would never find any downloaded file from such gateways. When any particular advertisement is clicked, be it accidentally or willingly, a payment gateway should get open and they should verify and confirm the genuity of your request and then, after your acknowledgement, the payment should be deducted, which is not the case here. Android paid applications developers’ use the same method to deduct your balance.
TATA DOCOMO, deducts my balance without my acknowledgement and nor without any intimation afterwards. I have been already registered in Do Not Disturb Category very long ago. Still I can’t understand the reason why I am being targeted for such unsolicited ads from TATA DOCOMO. As per TRAI guidelines ( Consumer’s handbook on Telecommunications), it is clearly mentioned in Chapter 1 in Information to pre-paid customers relating to usage that
Immediately on making any deduction from the account of a pre-paid consumer, the service provider should inform him through SMS or USSD, the following information
c) after activation of any service including Value Added Service,-
(i) Amount deducted
(ii) Purpose for which the amount has been deducted;
(iii) Balance in the account; and
(iv) The validity period of the value added service.
(v)
No provision stated above are fulfilled by TATA DOCOMO when they deliberately start any Vas Service to a customer’s account without a customer’s knowledge/consent.This is my personal experience shared with others who have the same concern. When my account was deducted with an amount of Rs.5 or Rs. 2 or Rs. 1(deduction occurred almost daily), no intimation was conveyed to me, I came to know the details of the same by sending a message of DATA to 121. However, the most embarrassing and striking fact is that they do not let you know the fact that any vas service is activated on your mobile, but when you somehow come to know about the same, they, first deny it (as in my case- Kruti Shah – Appellate Authority Secretary has straightforward denied that fact,in writing as well as in oral), and when trying every effort to cancel such a VAS service, they hesitately cancel/deactivate such a VAS service and then surely informs you, which is very contradictory to the fact the a customer is not intimated when a service gets activated, but he is informed when a service gets deactivated after being charged for the same.
I would request you to prohibit such service providers to air such nonsense advertisements which state “CHARGES ON CLICK” when we use internet, upon clicking accidentally or unwillingly empties your main account by quite large extent.
No advertisement was being displayed when I was using BSNL’s prepaid DATA Plan which should be taken into account.
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