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Sam Boal/Photocall Ireland
red roaming
Vodafone fined €250k for making customers 'opt in' to roaming deal without their knowledge
Red Roaming was a package Vodafone offered where you could pay €3 for calls, texts and data while travelling in the EU.
VODAFONE HAS PAID out €2,500,000 to its customers and has been fined €250,000 for breaching contract change rules.
ComReg, the statutory communications regulator, found that the way in which the provider had signed up Pay As You Go customers to its Red Roaming package was in breach of regulations.
Red Roaming was a package Vodafone offered where you could pay €3 while travelling in the EU which would give the user unlimited calls and texts and a small allocation of data.
This is now defunct as it now costs nothing extra to use your phone anywhere in the EU since new roaming legislation was brought in. The ComReg case deals with the Red Roaming package prior to the new laws being enacted.
Pay As You Go customers who travelled abroad were automatically opted in to the price plan meaning that many were being charged the daily €3 without using the full allowance.
According to ComReg, Vodafone has “accepted that it breached the relevant provisions and has paid the penalty in full”.
Vodafone also confirmed that it has credited over €2,500,000 to those customers who did not benefit financially from being opted into Red Roaming when they roamed.
A statement from the provider said that it had reimbursed those who “did not receive the full benefit of the offer”.
It added: “It became apparent from customer queries, the company’s own analysis and input from ComReg that not all Vodafone customers were benefitting from the value in the proposition and credits were applied to address this. The average amount was approximately €10 credit.”
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