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How does one deal with unauthorised caller tunes on the cell phone? I never subscribe to those caller tunes, yet I find the telecom service provider activating such services without my consent and billing me for it. The service provider is obviously violating the mandate of the telecom regulator and you should complain to TRAI about it. You should also complain to the nodal officer of the service provider and can deactivate the service through the toll-free number 155223. As per the guidelines issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on July 10, 2013, no value-added service (VAS), including caller tunes, can be activated by the service provider without a "double confirmation process" meant to get the explicit consent of the subscriber. Accordingly, after the offer of a value-added service is made on the service providers' platform, a second confirmation from the customer is required to be taken through a dedicated consent gateway which is owned by a third party and not by the service provider. It is only after receiving a second confirmation from the customer, that the service provider shall activate the value added service, TRAI has said.
Now that consumer courts are not hearing complaints against telecom companies, where does one complain? As per the Telecom Consumers Complaint Redressal Regulation, 2012, every service provider has to provide a complaint centre, a monitoring system to enable consumers to monitor the status of their complaint and has to stick to the time-frames provided for resolution of complaints. They also have to provide an appellate authority to help the consumer escalate the complaint if not resolved at the service provider's level. TRAI has also set up a Telecom Consumer Complaint Monitoring System, to help consumers lodge their complaint with the service provider, monitor its progress and escalate it to the appellate authority if it is not resolved at the nodal officer's level. You can access this through website www.tccms.gov.in. If the service provider fails to address your complaint, you can seek the help of the Public Grievance Cell of the Department of Telecommunication for resolution of your grievance. Address: PG Cell, Department of Telecommunication, Room No 518, Sanchar Bhawan, Ashoka Road, New Delhi -110001.) You can also access their website www.dot.gov.in/public-grievances. Besides the Telecom Consumers Complaint Redressal Regulation, 2012, the other two important regulations meant to address consumer complaints are: Quality of Service (code of practice on metering and billing accuracy) Regulation, 2006 (for issues pertaining to metering and billing.) and Quality of Service (time period of resolution of billing complaints, refund of dues/security deposits to consumers, rectification of calls, rebate in rent for delayed rectification of faults etc.) of Basic and Cellular Mobile Telephone Services, Regulations, 2009. You can see them on the TRAI website.
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The regulator has also
assigned a uniform toll-free short code number: 155223 for
deactivation of such unauthorised VAS. All that the subscriber has to
do is to send a blank SMS to 155223. You will then get a list of the
VAS services activated on your mobile number and you can select the
service that you want to deactivate. Similarly, 24 hours before
re-activation of a value-added service, the service provider has to
send an SMS to the subscriber informing her/him of it. Upon activation
of VAS service, the de-activation number, the validity of the VAS
service and charges for renewal should be explicitly given to the
consumer, says TRAI. Following these guidelines, the number of
complaints on unauthorised activation of VAS has come down
substantially ( from 75,117 in July to 9338 in August 2013), TRAI said
in a press release.