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London (pte049/14.04.2005/14:45) - OfCom is set to introduce new industry laws that will cut out "slamming" and other dodgy sales techniques following complaints about the practices of some fixed line telecommunications companies. As the British IT portal The Register http://www.theregister.co.uk reports, from the end of May, all telecoms companies that sell fixed line services must follow a mandatory code of practise to prevent customers being tricked into switching telephone suppliers. In the worst "slamming" cases, customers are switched from one telecom company to another without their knowledge or consent. Companies in breach of the new rules could be fined up to 10 per cent of turnover.
"These measures should help support progress towards the appropriate levels of clarity and transparency whilst the market continues to mature," said Stephen Carter, OfCom's chief executive. Although BT has welcomed the measures, it does not believe that they go far enough and wants regulator OfCom to take a harder line against those companies engaged in dodgy selling. The company claims that 15,000 customers a month complain about the way they've transferred away from BT and says that its research shows that the problem is getting worse. "Consumers are telling us that the issue of misselling is extremely important to them. As some companies launch aggressive door-to-door consumer selling campaigns, with salesmen with little accountability, we fear even larger scale hassle for customers. Customers are rightly demanding protection and effective measures that will stamp out misselling for good," said Ian Livingston, BT Retail's boss.
However, not every company agrees that misselling is a problem and some rivals even claim that BT is overreacting. "We are 100 percent supportive of OfCom's plans. We have however had differences of opinion with BT over their claims of the scale of the complaints. All the responsible players in the industry want to see misselling stamped out and working with OfCom is the best way to do this," said Ian El-Mokadem, the head of One.Tel.
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