The debited funds were returned to Ucell subscribers

Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- The Agency for Protection of Consumer Rights under the Antimonopoly Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan managed, through the protection of the rights of one consumer (whose damage amounted to 420 soums), to find out about the violations committed in relation to 337,975 subscribers of Ucell. The total amount of damage made up over 97.43 million soums.

The SMS-notification of “Ucell” company about debiting 420 soums from the subscriber account from 1 October, surprised the consumer. Yes, the amount is not significant, but the consumer decided to clarify the situation. It is important to clarify that a Ucell subscriber is a participant in the "Al-Chiroq" campaign, which provides minutes on the network, SMS packages or megabytes of the Internet for only 84 soums. Despite the fact that this service was not available for several days, the money was debited from the subscriber’s account. In turn, the consumer decided to leave an appeal on the website, the details of which were studied by the Agency for the Protection of Consumer Rights.

In order to clarify all the details of the consumer’s appeal, the Agency for the Protection of Consumer Rights sent a letter to COSCOM LLC, as a result of which it turned out that:

1. According to the terms of the “Al-Chiroq” Promotion, registered subscribers of “Ucell” Company in the mobile application “First IT-Group” LLC, specially developed by the Content Provider, have the opportunity to receive one service per day for a daily subscription fee of 1 sum per day, and from 25 August 2020 the daily subscription fee for the Promotion is 84 soums per day.

2. On 30 September 2020, the application crashed, which was fixed on 5 October 2020 by the Content Provider. And due to the failure that occurred in the period from 30 September to 4 October 2020, the company’s subscribers were unable to receive the services provided for by the terms of the Promotion.

In the course of studying this issue, the Agency managed to find out that the consumer who applied was not the only one from the subscriber account whose money was illegally debited. In the period from 30 September to 4 October 2020, 337,975 subscribers participated in the promotion, from whom the subscription fee was debited in the total amount of over 97.43 million soums.

According to Article 21 of the "Law on the Protection of Consumer Rights", the seller (performer) does not have the right to insist on the purchase of additional goods or the provision of additional services by the consumer for payment, as well as to charge fees for services not provided.

In the course of resolving the issue by the Agency for the Protection of Consumer Rights, 337,975 subscribers of the company, who could not participate in the promotion from 30 September to 4 October 2020, due to a system failure, were returned the debited funds in full.