Agcom gives a wink to consumers and points to reimbursement for the illegitimate increases caused by 28-day rather than monthly pricing. The Guarantor has in fact arranged, through resolutions of formal notice addressed to the four main operators (Tim, WindTre, Vodafone and Fastweb), to "eliminate the effects of the illegitimate anticipation of the effective date of invoices issued after the deadline referred to in article 2, paragraph 3, of resolution no. 121/17/CONS".
The guarantor has therefore prepared an unusual form of compensation: they are expected in the month of April bonus in the form of free days in your landline bill, discount on the cost of the home line for phone calls, ADSL and fiber optics.
The solution wanted by the Authority had to take into account the decision of the Tar of Lazio of last February to freeze any compensation until the hearing on the merits, which will come next November. In fact, the court feared a negative effect on the operators' accounts, in the event that they had to compensate users in cash. A lack of intervention by Agcom would have left users without protection for another eight months, fueling the hope of being able to be compensated, limiting their ability to change manager
Lo discount envisaged by the guarantor will be calculated on the basis of the days "eroded" to the attempts through accelerated bills instead of monthly ones. The starting point for the calculation is fixed at June 27 2017, date from which the Authority indicated the monthly bill as the only legitimate model).
The number of days – maximum fifteen – which operators will have to "return" will therefore depend on the departure date of the user's subscription. In the text of the Agcom resolution, a useful and easy example is presented which helps to better understand the dynamics in question: "Given that starting from 23 June 2017 operators would have had to adapt to monthly billing, an invoice starting from 23 June it should have covered the period up to the following 22 July; on the other hand, by applying the four-weekly calculation, the invoiced period would have stopped on 20 July, with an erosion equal to 2 days. The next effective period should have been from 23 July to 22 August; instead, again based on the four-weekly calculation, the effective date would have concerned the period from 21 July to 17 August, with an erosion of 3 days on the single billing cycle and by 5 on the total of the two billing cycles. And so on".
Therefore, the thorny problem that has been going on for many months now seems to have been resolved once and for all. The 2018 Budget Law, imposing monthly bills on fixed and mobile telephony and also on pay TV starting from next April 5th. The operators called into question by the Agcom resolution will in all probability obey the law. Otherwise, they could incur a new penalty, after those imposed a December, from 1,16 million euros.
