A consumer court today ordered service provider Hutch to pay Rs 30,000 compensation for mental agony and harassment after it charged one of its customers for undelivered short messages (SMS).
Disposing off a petition filed by Dharam Pal Gupta, the North Delhi Consumer Forum clarified that cell-phone customers should not be made to pay for undelivered messages.
‘‘SMS involves not only sending the message of the subscriber. The service charges can be taken only after delivering the message... To discontinue such unfair trade for all times to come, this forum orders that Hutch will not, henceforth, debit the subscriber with SMS charges until the message is delivered,” the forum said in its order.
In July last year, Gupta tried to download ringtones through his Hutch phone (No. 9811525341). He failed to receive a tone despite sending repeated messages to a four digit number. Although, Hutch is one of the service providers supporting the service, he complained that not only did he not receive the tones but also Hutch deleted Rs 45 from his account.
Hutch filed a reply saying that in such cases, the charges are levied by ringtone providers such Indiatimes and Yahoo and that it cannot be held responsible for deficiency of service on their part. The court, however, dismissed this argument and pointed out that the customer’s contract is with the service provider and not with its associates.
‘‘Hutch cannot absolve itself from legal obligations to provide services to the subscriber merely because it has arrangements with other companies for further the further transmission of the message,’’ it observed.
The court also reprimanded Hutch for ignoring Gupta’s complaint on its customer care number. On hearing the complaint, Gupta alleged, one of the company’s employee told him that he did not have time for grievances involving such ‘‘trifle’’ amounts and reportedly said he spends that much money on soft-drinks everyday.
The forum also ordered the firm to display on the cell screen the time at which the message was sent and the time at which it was delivered.