January 27th, 2009 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Other news | No Comments »
Netsize has received several penalties in The Netherlands last week for collecting money via “dirty” SMS campaigns. The penalties are expected to damage the company's position in the Dutch market.
The penalties are mostly based on Content Subscriptions where Netsize didn't communicate a clear way of terminating the subscription (though several services din't even have an opt-out option). A lot of consumers also complaint that they didn't even sign up for a service. It appeared that several services didn't check if the person filling in the information to access premium content, was the owner of the phone number.
As a result, Netsize needs to place three expensive adverts. One in a country wide paid news paper, at the size of half a page. The two others are full sized ads in free newspapers. In the adverts, the company has to explain how to get rid of it's services and even how consumers can claim back lost money.