Orange si Vodafone they received two huge fines from ANCOM recently because of the way they treated their customers who chose to use their mobile phone services outside of Romania. Orange and Vodafone received fines with a cumulative value of 180.000 LEI for violating the regulation I roam like at home, the one that regulates the way in which benefits are offered in subscriptions and cards for use in the EEA space.
Orange and Vodafone received a fine of 50.000 LEI for not introducing the reasonable use policy in the subscription-based mobile phone contracts they offered to customers. Separately, Vodafone was fined 30.000 LEI for unilaterally changing the contractual clauses for the use of prepaid services, and another 50.000 LEI for not introducing the reasonable use policy for prepaid cards.
HUGE FINES for Orange and Vodafone from ANCOM
Vodafone is, therefore, the operator that violated the customers' rights the most, and was fined 130.000 LEI, while Orange received a fine of 50.000 LEI. Orange and Vodafone are the two largest operators on the Romanian market, and neither of them said anything about the reasonable usage policy until the moment when people started to forget that they had left the country, and the costs started to rise.
"Because it did not notify users about the fact that it changed the contractual clauses (respectively the General Terms and Conditions for the use of prepaid services) regarding the conditions under which the roaming service is provided, Vodafone was fined 30.000 lei, the operator fixing the problems identified before the 90-day deadline. Orange and Vodafone were fined 50.000 lei each for not introducing the reasonable use policy in the contracts concluded with subscription-based mobile phone service users. Vodafone was also fined 50.000 lei for not introducing the reasonable use policy in the general terms and conditions for the use of prepaid cards."
Orange and Vodafone have probably foreseen the fact that they will face sanctions for violating the roaming regulations, and it is possible that the amounts obtained in this regard will be higher than the fines. Even so, it is good to see that ANCOM still occasionally does its job and that it takes seriously people's reports regarding the problems that Orange and Vodafone had, as these are not the first fines received in 2018 by, at least, those from Vodafone.