Mobile carrier Kyivstar’s 26 million subscribers better check their bills if they’ve been traveling by air – they may have been charged sky-high rates for services without even knowing it.
Ukrainian Olexandr Dovgopol, a client of Kyivstar, Ukraine’s biggest Ukrainian mobile operator, says he was automatically charged almost $150 for a service he never asked for – mobile internet on a plane.
For three weeks, Dovgopol has sent complaints to the Kyivstar call center. He accused them of charging $150 for automatically connecting his phone to the internet as he turned airplane mode off on his device. He says he was never asked if he wanted the service.
Dovgopol says he just received an SMS message: “Welcome to roaming on the plane! Standard tariffs: Outgoing calls – Hr 150 a minute, incoming calls – Hr 150 a minute, SMS – Hr 15, GPRS – Hr 20 for 50 kilobytes.”
“Then I saw the EDGE icon and my apps started updating. It was suspicious, so I turned my phone off, but it was too late. After landing, I found my balance had become minus Hr 3,800 ($150). I didn’t ask for this service, I didn’t even know about it,” Dovgopol wrote on Facebook.
Dovgopol hasn’t got his money back, as Kyivstar has refused to provide a refund.
Kyivstar gives information about the service on its website, but in the English-language version it’s hidden in an oddly named expanding tab called “Peculiarities of roaming outside the land.” The information that’s immediately visible on the website, however, says that “in most countries the service costs Hr 2-4 for calls, 35-60 kopeks for 1 Mb of the internet, and Hr 1 for an SMS.”
Kyivstar spokesperson Iryna Lelichenko told the Kyiv Post that the carrier hasn’t breached any rules, because Dovgopol does not deny his smartphone was connected to the onboard communication service.
“The company hasn’t violated any (laws). The subscriber used the data transfer service during a flight of Qatar Airlines, in the network of a foreign telecom operator,” Lelichenko said. “Our technical check confirmed it. When checking in the onboard communication network, the subscriber receives a notification with the terms and conditions of the service.”
Commenting on the case, associate at law firm Axon Partners Olexandr Kozhukhar said that by automatically providing in-flight roaming and subsequently charging high fees, cellphone providers companies are taking advantage of lax protections for consumers in Ukraine.
“(The mobile operators) rely on an inadequate Ukrainian telecommunications consumer protection regime,” Kozhukhar told the Kyiv Post. “If negotiations with the telecom company are unsuccessful, as often happens, the consumer has to file a complaint or lawsuit with (Ukraine’s telecom regulator), or go to court to sue for compensation for costs incurred from an in-flight roaming service,” Kozhukhar said.
Automatic data synchronization using in-flight roaming can easily result in extra-high fees if the consumer doesn’t switch off their phone and the device automatically updates apps.
While the issue remains unregulated in Ukraine, Colombian legislation, for instance, stipulates that telecom providers there can only activate roaming services at the user’s request.
The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by Ciklum and NIX Solutions. The content is independent of the donors.
