THE Senate on Monday will resume its inquiry into unauthorized deductions from mobile prepaid balances, or incidents of so-called “nakaw load.”
Senator Paolo Benigno A. Aquino IV, chair of the Senate committee on science and technology, said telecommunication companies are expected to provide updates into their efforts to address complaints regarding third-party value-added services (VAS) providers automatically enrolling consumers and deducting from their balances without consent.
“It has been more than a month (since the first hearing) so we are expecting they fulfill these resolutions,” he said in a statement.
At the previous hearing, an internet group proposed a notification system for mobile subscribers for transactions that propose to deduct from their balances.
Mr. Aquino said the proposal would allow subscribers to monitor their load spending and cancel services they do not wish to avail of.
While officials from Smart Communications, Inc. and Globe Telecom, Inc. were open to the proposal, they have yet to commit on adopting it in their services.
“Yes, we agree to it. In fact, we are already implementing that particular requirement with respect to value-added services,” PLDT-Smart Public Affairs Head Ramon R. Isberto earlier told reporters.
“We’ll take that into serious consideration. But just the same, we also have ways of notifying our customers of their current prepaid load,” Globe General Counsel Froilan M. Castelo said at the previous hearing.
Mr. Aquino also reiterated his call to telecommunication companies to conduct a complete audit of all their VAS and impose more transparent procedures for services that users pay for to avert incidents of missing load. — Camille A. Aguinaldo
