reply to follow up "Vodafone live charges"

<p>Dear Lesley Abels Senior Consultant<br /> <br />So, what happened to "Double opt-in"? in my case: not even "Single opt-in" has been enforced.<br />And in fact who is responsible for billing? Vodacom must be responsible for not enforcing the rule "no billing without confirmation" otherwise is pretty useless! Especially when a pre-paid customer has no monthly bill to check, and by the way requesting a thirty days statement has,in my case, proven to be another waste of time: no statement received after filling the web-form and various follow up calls, notwithstanding the charge for the service was debited at once.<br />What a great customer service!?<br />Vodacom is an accomplice to this **** of getting revenue off unaware customers.<br />And what about refunding me?<br />What a nice way to wash your hands off.<br />Regards</p> <p> </p> <p><br />Good day</p> <p>We apologise for not responding to your posting timeously and thank you for your patience.<br />b request<br />In order to improve customer service Vodacom has launched "Double opt-in".</p> <p>This is a two-step subscription process. When a subscriber opts-in to a subscription service or requests an ad-hoc (once-off billing) WASP service, the subscriber will be requested to confirm their willingness to subscribe to the service before commencement of billing for b servit enforcinsce. This means that when a subscriber responds to a marketing message and requests the service (using any of the available bearers: SMS, USSD, WAP, etc) he will not be immediately subscribed for the service. The subscriber will receive a service notification informing him of the le name, price and billing frequency and requesting the subscriber to confirm the subscription request by sending a confirmation.<br />Only once the customer replies with a ?YES? will the customer be deemed to have subscribed to the service and only then should billing commence. If the customer does not respond to the service notification message the service will not be rendered to the customer. Therefore the technical solution ensures that billing never takes place unless there is a confirmation of the service request from the customer</p> <p>WASPs (who are the providers of the content) are within their rights to appoint an agent to bill and collect money on their behalf for content sold by them to their customers.</p> <p>It is not required in law for the agent (in this case Vodacom) to have a specific agreement with, or permission from, the customer, to bill and collect the money on behalf of the WASP.</p> <p>Notwithstanding the above, the agreement concluded between each WASP and Vodacom provides that every WASP that utilises Vodacom's services to bill and collect monies for the WASPs' products/services, may only instruct Vodacom to bill and collect money for those products/services that have been specifically requested by customers.</p> <p>Moreover the Wireless Application Service Provider Association (WASPA) has been constituted to regulate all WASPs to ensure, inter alia, that they abide with the aforementioned provision.</p> <p>Please note, formal complaints can only be submitted directly to Waspa by the customer telephonically or by email.<br />Email address : ********** />Contact number : ********** 710 (standard rates apply)</p> <p>Regards</p> <p>Lesley Abels<br />Senior Consultant</p> <p>This e-mail is classified C2 - Vodacom Restricted - Information to be used inside Vodacom but it may be shared with authorised partners.<br />“This e-mail is sent on the Terms and Conditions that can be accessed by Clicking on this link https://webmail.vodacom.co.za/tc/default.html "</p>