Hi everyone, I recently switched to Simpel, and it turned out to be anything but simple.
Today I noticed that Simpel charges insane fees without proper warning. I was charged 50€ for 600MB the Internet usage without proper warning while my phone disconnected from WiFi while updating - obviously it runs out of internet at night.
They send me two messages of “warning” that my internet is low but didn’t stop the internet traffic as other phone providers do. I tried contacting customer support and they said that they did “everything” to let me know that my internet is low and that this is written in the contract, so they are not at fault!
I think that this could be the case of a policy intentionally designed as misleading – An unfair policy practice, so a policy is designed in a way that the customer can easily get an extra charge while the company is not technically at fault because they warned you (in the most negligible way) and put it in the contract (Did you read your whole contract and all the sub-points in a small text when you subscribed to Simpel?).
And of course, my issue was not resolved by the customer support, that blamed me for the situation. Well, after all, what can they do? It's not like they designed the user experience this way, so if it happens to you as well – it's your fault. At least according to them.
I think this kind of policy practice needs to be reported to the proper authorities, do you have any suggestions of institutions in The Netherlands that do investigations into this kind of policy by the companies?
Thank you in advance.
Kiki
I think I found it! https://business.gov.nl/regulation/unfair-trading-practices/
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32005L0029#d1e597-22-1
Directive 2005/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2005 concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market and amending Council Directive 84/450/EEC, Directives 97/7/EC, 98/27/EC and 2002/65/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and Regulation (EC) No 2006/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council (‘Unfair Commercial Practices Directive’) (Text with EEA relevance)
Article 7
Misleading omissions
1. A commercial practice shall be regarded as misleading if, in its factual context, taking account of all its features and circumstances and the limitations of the communication medium, it omits material information that the average consumer needs, according to the context, to take an informed transactional decision and thereby causes or is likely to cause the average consumer to take a transactional decision that he would not have taken otherwise.
Hi
Unfortunate to read that you've made extra costs!
When ordering the new subscription, you indeed have to accept the terms and conditions, which contains (among others) the rate list. It is not the responsibility of Simpel to make sure that you've read all of this. If you accept the terms and conditions, we assume that you've actually read it.
We understand that you do not want to make any extra costs. That is why we warn you at 80% and 100% usage of the internetbundle. In case you use more internet after the last warning, we will charge 15 cents per MB (as stated in the rate list, see the link above). This is indeed a higher rate in comparison to the bundle itself, therefor we offer the possibility to buy an extra internetbundle (MB-aanvuller). We also offer an extra service: the Plafond. This is a limit you can set for 50 cents per month to make sure you cannot make any extra costs. I advice you to set this, so this cannot happen again.
This is not a case of policy intentionally designed as misleading, as you state in your post. We indeed did everything to make sure you knew about the possible extra costs/bundle that was running out..
Kind regards, Charlie
Simpel
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