Romanian consumer protection authority urges mobile operator to give up price hikes

Romania’s consumer protection authority – ANPC urged one of the biggest mobile operators in the country to give up the recently announced price increases, which it defined as “incorrect commercial behavior”. ANPC president Marius Pirvu issued the order on Friday, May 3.

This measure comes after ANPC sanctioned the same company with a RON 70,000 (EUR 14,900) fine for increasing the cost of ongoing subscriptions. ANPC didn’t announce the name of the sanctioned company but local media wrote that the decisions target Vodafone Romania, the second-biggest mobile carrier on the local market.

Vodafone was the first telecom player that notified its clients that the price of services provided to them would increase starting May due to the new taxes levied on telecom companies through the Government’s emergency ordinance 114/2018, also known as the “greed tax ordinance”.

ANPC announced that it controlled the respective telecom operator after receiving complaints from its clients related to the price increases. “Following controls carried out by ANPC, we found that the respective economic operator uses an unfair commercial practice, contrary to professional diligence because it chose to transfer some costs – appeared following legislation changes -, to the consumers, using a position of dominant and psychological force,” ANPC explained.

The price increases would affect over 2.3 million clients of the telecom operator, which is why ANPC ordered the company to stop these practices.

In a previous press release, ANPC said that although clients can choose to close their contracts, the procedure for closing the subscription and porting the number to another network takes time, which is why most clients would likely accept the price increase.

The other big telecom operators (Orange, Telekom, RCS&RDS and UPC) may also be targeted by similar controls and sanctions in the following period as all of them announced price increases due to the new taxes, according to Adevarul.

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