Penalty discount for H3G. The telephone company will have to pay a fine of 70 euros for unfair commercial practices, but risked having to put his hand on his wallet in a much heavier way. On the first resolution of the Antitrust, which arrived in November 2008, a figure with five zeros was written.
It all started three years ago, when the company broadcast an advertisement on the website www.zig.it which, according to the Authority, damaged consumers. The subject of the message was one of the many generous "subscription services of logos, ringtones and other multimedia content for mobile phones". As stated in the last weekly bulletin of the Antitrust, H3G has provided "information not corresponding to the truth, inaccurate or incomplete". In particular, it did not clearly specify the economic conditions of the service, misleading customers. A behavior that the body led by Antonio Catricalà has punished in an exemplary way: a 100 thousand euro fine.
Then the second half of the match began. H3G appealed and the ball passed to the Lazio Tar. In February last year, the administrative judge confirmed the unfairness of the commercial practice, but accepted the company's protests regarding the amount of the fine. Too heavy. Above all because the notorious wording "do you want to receive the ringtone as a gift immediately?" never appeared on the website. Furthermore, a particularly complex procedure was not required to deactivate the service, as is often the case. Finally, it is necessary to take into account the "proportionality of the fine to the economic resources" of the company, which "is found to have recorded losses". Thus the fine was reduced by 30%.
