EE Compliance Notification
Scheduled Maintenance Report for Fonix Services
Completed
The scheduled maintenance has been completed.
Posted Nov 01, 2016 - 10:49 GMT
Scheduled
Dear Customer

Please see below a communication we have received from EE regarding an update to their compliance policy. Please ensure this is circulated to all relevant parties and that the required conditions are implemented by 1st November 2016.

As you are aware, there are a number of initiatives happening in the Charge to Mobile space at the moment and EE need to ensure that we are in the best place to take this area of the business forward into 2017 and beyond. Our goal is simple – to protect our customers, to create opportunities for new services coming into the market, and to make it easy for our customers to buy and interact with services that they wish to pay for using their mobile phone account or credit.

As you will remember, in November 2015, we communicated that we were extending our Payforit Mandate to include Competition and Glamour Services as well as Adult Services. This move was taken as a customer protection measure due to the very high and disproportionate number of complaints from EE customers about these service types.

The extended Mandate came into force on 4th January this year and since then, we have seen a number of different services continuing to operate on flows outside of the Payforit Scheme and in breach of our Mandate. We have also seen a number of Competition flows, which while not strictly operating in breach of the wording of our Mandate, are not operating in the spirit of our Mandate, as they are presenting consumers with flows that we are concerned are unclear or misleading, and therefore carry a high risk of causing serious harm to our consumers. Proof of this, and most concerning of all to the Senior Management at EE, is that our customer call volumes related to these services have not dropped, in fact they are higher than ever. PhonepayPlus have also confirmed that their September 2016 complaint volumes were the highest they have ever been, with the majority of these complaints being related to online competitions and adult services.

To that end, from 1st November 2016, EE will start taking stronger enforcement action against any Competition, Glamour or Adult Service that is in breach of our PFI Mandate. We will also be removing the Co-Reg exemption that previously existed from the same date. Enforcement action may include but not be limited to;

• A period of suspension of the service across all L1s
• Withholding of revenue share payments
• Permanent barring of a service or service provider from the EE Network

For clarification, where there is an online interaction between the consumer and the service, the service must use an approved Payforit flow and cannot use an alternative flow, sometimes referred to as a ‘PSMS flow’. This includes, but is not limited to, customers being taken online by a URL sent to a consumer in an SMS marketing message, or an embedded link in an outbound e-mail, or any other means. The only Competition Services that are permitted to operate outside of the Payforit Scheme Rules are those where there is no ‘flow’ and the consumer interacts with the service by sending an MO containing a ‘keyword’ which they will be doing in response to a call to action either from a TV/Radio/Magazine advertisement etc. This is a customer protection measure and any service we feel to be acting not in the spirit of what we are trying to achieve will incur enforcement action in line with the above.

In addition, EE considers ‘click training’ (exploitation of the online PRS frictionless journey) as a continuing problem, particularly around Competition and Adult services. Increasingly, we are concerned that selection clicks are meaningless and used to train a pattern of behaviour, detracting from essential service information prior to consent to charge. Whilst EE recognise the legitimate need for a merchant to create an attractive marketing flow through to the payment pages, it is essential that relevance is maintained and information collected is used meaningfully.

EE consider that click-training techniques also extend to the use of repetitive text surrounding the buttons on promotional pages, which might desensitise consumers from reading the text on subsequent pages and therefore detract the consumer from reading the Charge Notification when it is presented on the PFI pages.

EE will therefore assess click training under the following criteria, in addition to that detailed under the PFI Scheme Rules:

· Prior to the Payforit payment pages, selection criteria actioned by clicks may only be used where it directly determines the content or service received

· There must be a clear transition from the promotional pages to the PFI flow. The promotional pages must not seek to obscure the transition by replicating the style and layout of aspects of the PFI pages. PFI rule 1.2.1.15 prohibits the PFI call to action button colour and size from being replicated on the promotional pages. It is expected that button size and colour are therefore noticeably different in pursuant of the spirit of this rule
From the issuing of this Compliance update, EE will not be allowing new services adopting ‘click training’ to go live on the Network. Existing services have until 1st November 2016 to amend their flows to comply with the above.

One final point, we are receiving a large number of complaints from consumers who are receiving charges having only just taken out a new contract with EE. Whilst we believe that some of these consumers may have been given recycled MSISDN’s which are still receiving charges for subscriptions initiated by the previous owner of that number, some of these charges are also unsolicited messages being sent to databases of numbers. May we remind you that you need to obtain and store a robust ‘consent to charge’ for every mobile billing transaction and you must cleanse your databases in accordance with the rules set out in our Code of Practice and your EE Contracts. Red Cards will be issued to anyone found to be still sending subscription charges to recycled MSISDN’s or sending unsolicited charges. For reference, our current quarantine period is 90 days.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Kind regards

Fonix Compliance Team
Posted Oct 24, 2016 - 13:51 BST
This scheduled maintenance affected: Compliance.