Sudden high cell phone bill: be careful with this texting pitfall

Twenty francs in September. Thirty francs in October. Jean-Paul* does not understand where these amounts on his recent mobile phone bills come from. It says ‘Premium Services’ every time. However, 68-year-old Jean-Paul cannot remember ever using a ‘premium service’.

His memories do not deceive him: he never asked for such an offer. Yet he was overbilled twice in a row. The amounts stated were charged by his mobile phone provider, Coop Mobile. It feels like cheating if the monthly subscription, like Jean-Paul, actually costs 29.90 francs. That is a far cry from the 49.90 francs he had to pay in September.

Payment is enforced

So what happened? First of all, you need to make it clear that everything is going well here. All the more annoying. Like many others, the affected person contacted Coop Mobile and tried to determine the cause of the problem. The answer: they are premium text messages sent more or less randomly to mobile customers who have not requested them. Jean-Paul has fallen into a trap that threatens us all.

Coop Mobile is not to blame. An employee of the provider explains the situation to Watson:

That may be true, but that’s not the problem. The problem is the forced payment for receiving unwanted text messages. You think about the advertisements that fill your mailbox and that you simply throw away without even looking at them. Only you don’t have to pay for delivery. With premium SMS, the subscriber is obliged to do so.

How do you get out of this situation?

How can you avoid this pressure to pay? An employee of Coop Mobiel gives a tip:

At Jean-Paul’s request, Coop Mobile identified the person responsible for sending the premium SMS: Paycon, a company based in the Canton of Schwyz.

The provider Paycon is also well known to the consumer protection organization Fédération romande des consommateurs (FRC), which is often asked for help in cases similar to Jean-Paul’s.

The Schwyz company assures Watson that it acts strictly legally.

But don’t mobile operators have a duty of care? Shouldn’t it be their job to warn their subscribers about the risks of these unsolicited broadcasts if they are the targets of these broadcasts? “You are not legally obliged to do this. In addition, some premium numbers are very practical and transparent, such as: B. the numbers with which you can buy bus tickets,” answers Malika Pessard.

The FRC lawyer provides information about what to do in the event of a dispute:

Jean-Paul wrote a letter to Paycon and complained about overpriced text messages that the Schwyz provider had sent him without his permission. Paycon responded that he was merely an intermediary between the customer – who often does not know that he is a customer of anything – and the provider. Paycon also asked Jean-Paul to provide him with his mobile phone number so that the identity of the provider in question could be verified. You can never take too many precautions, not even afterwards.
*First name changed