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Vodafone pleads guilty to breaching Fair Trading Act

Vodafone pleaded guilty to breaching the Fair Trading Act in relation to misleading representations about its Vodafone Live internet service.

NBR Staff
Tue, 19 Jul 2011

Vodafone has pleaded guilty to five charges of misleading representations under the Fair Trading Act in Auckland District Court yesterday.

The Commerce Commission is seeking a penalty in excess of $500,000 from the company and has laid charges in relation to six different mobile and promotional campaigns. 

The outcome dealt with one of those cases and Vodafone was defending the other five cases, which will be heard at a later date.

Vodafone said the charges related to the initial stages of accessing the internet via a mobile phone in 2007. 

"During this period there was differential charging between V-live! and the rest of the mobile internet."

The company said the commission had accepted that the differential charging was an unintended result of technical problems and at no time did Vodafone intentionally mislead customers.

"However we accept that we could have done a better job explaining the charging mechanism.
 
We have apologised and co-operated fully with the Commerce Commission and wherever possible we believe we have refunded all the affected customers."

Vodafone said it had since put in place and would continue to improve measures to ensure customers were not confused by data charging.

NBR Staff
Tue, 19 Jul 2011
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Vodafone pleads guilty to breaching Fair Trading Act
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