It's happened again! A telecoms company has just tried to 'slam' my business phone.
28 October 2009
Slamming is an extreme form of mis-selling where a communications provider switches a customer to a new provider without their knowledge and/or consent. It happens to both businesses and consumers and can be very disconcerting for customers - the first you may know about it is when, out of the blue, you receive a bill from a new company.
In my case, the conversation was deliberately misleading with a claim that they were ‘working very closely with BT ‘ and that they had noticed that we were being charged the wrong rate on our BT account and wanted to rectify this by moving the account to a cheaper rate. The overall aim was to imply that we were talking to an agent of our current provider and that any change would be with that same provider. But, not surprisingly, the caller was unable to give the name of the contact person for the account, the type of account we hold, or to quote accurately the amount we were paying - despite having apparently noticed that it was too high.
Other ‘slams' include taking an order for a broadband line but switching the telephone account at the same time, asking a customer to sign for information but then switching the consumer to a different provider and even forging a customer's signature on a contract without the customer's consent.
Ofcom has been consulting on proposals to clamp down on slamming and other forms of mis-selling in the fixed-line telecoms market. There most recent consultation suggested a two stage approach.
Stage 1, which they propose to implement straight away, includes an outright ban on mis-selling as part of a set of simplified regulations that all providers must heed.
Stage 2 will be revisited in a consultation document to be published towards the end of this year following a cost/benefit assessment. Stage 2 proposals include:
- retaining call recordings, requiring providers to keep better records of all conversations relating to sales. Better quality records will lead to more effective enforcement;
- an obligation on providers to give clear advice, reminding consumers that there may be negative consequences if they switch provider, such as possible termination charges for leaving a contract early.
The Communications Consumer Panel has welcomed Ofcom's proposals to strengthen the regulatory framework that governs the switching of fixed-line services, and we would also like to see Ofcom develop a strategy to move to a single switching process for all communications services as soon as possible.
The Panel would like Ofcom to work with industry to understand better the nature and scale of the mis-selling problem because we recognise that even where people are not slammed they can suffer considerable anxiety and distress, and we believe it important to understand:
- how many people are switched without their consent, i.e. slammed; and
- how many people discover they have been switched - without having agreed to this - but who manage to prevent it happening.
We would also like to see financial penalties that have a wider deterrent effect on providers that break the rules thereby helping to raise the level of compliance across the industry.