Broadband ISPs Met Technologies Limited (Met Plus Telecom and Millenium Talk) and Guaranteed Telecom Limited (Zoom Telecom) are being probed by Ofcom UK, which occurred after a number of consumers reported alleged incidents where their telecoms service had been switched without their permission.
The practice of SLAMMING is a mis-selling tactic that can occur when naughty people or ISPs trigger a switch (migration) of your service to another provider, albeit without you ever having given confirmed consent. Ofcom’s existing migration rules (General Condition 7 – formerly GC22) are designed to protect against such abuse, but they’re not perfect.
In a brief statement Ofcom said, “Specifically, this investigation is examining whether these companies have engaged in slamming by placing transfer orders, including repeat transfer orders, for switching customers’ communication services without their express knowledge and/or consent.” Such probes tend to take awhile and are unlikely to conclude until later in 2020. Should the regulator find fault with either of the groups then they could force through changes or potentially impose a large fine.
A quick Google around reveals a number of related complaints against the providers (some examples here and here) and one of them – Guaranteed Telecom – even managed to get on the bad side of the BBC’s Technology Correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, after they targeted one of his elderly relatives.
Anyone else had dealings with Guaranteed Telecoms? They called up my elderly relative and persuaded her to set up a direct debit – for a call blocking service…
— Rory Cellan-Jones (@ruskin147) February 11, 2019
I was looking at Guaranteed Telecom recently and I made some observations:
Unlimited broadband has a 100GB fair use policy.
They claim to charge 3.5ppm for 0845 and 6.5ppm for 0870 calls. Since these are service numbers then the unbundled/”UK Calling” rules apply and they must specify what their *access* charge is, which will be added to the appropriate service charge for the range. It’s possible that they are trying to say they have a 3.5ppm access charge for 0845 and a 6.5ppm access charge for 0870 but this does not satisfy OfCom’s conditions, which are that you must choose a single access charge which applies for all 084/087/09 and 118 numbers. This rule only applies to consumer services and not those aimed at business but they specify the same rates on their Home tariffs too.
There is a graphic on their site at https://www.guaranteedtelecom.co.uk/business-basic.html which even seems to suggest that BT and Talk Talk (business) do not allow access to 0845 numbers, or at least, I cannot see any other way of interpreting the graphic right now.
They specify a mobile rate apparently excluding the 3 network. I know that Three used to have a higher MTR than the rest of the networks but they have not done so for quite a few years now, so there is no need to exclude them.
Something tells me that OfCom needs to have a word with them about much more than just slamming.