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Following the publication of our final statement and Code 15 on 20 October 2021, we heard from several industry members involved in broadcast competitions and voting phone-paid services. They have told us that service-specific Requirement 3.13.3 cannot be implemented by them. 

We are therefore consulting on minor clarificatory changes to these service-specific Requirements.   

The closing date for this consultation is 23 February 2022. 

See the consultation document in full.

In 2020/21, complaint levels dropped to the lowest levels we’ve seen in a decade. In 2020/21, we took 5,347 complaints from consumers, compared to 13,914 complaints in 2019/20 and 33,610 in 2016/17.

We continued developing Code 15, the most comprehensive review of our regulation in more than a decade. The new Code will enable a new approach to regulation that will raise standards, prevent harm, be simpler to comply with and be underpinned by smarter enforcement.

In terms of enforcement, we worked on 249 cases and issued fines totaling £3,635,000 against non-compliant service providers.

Read the Annual report for 2020/21 in full

The new guidance is intentionally shorter and simpler than current guidance. It is intended to support compliance with the Code rather than add complexity.

We are proposing seven pieces of guidance that will support the Transparency, Fairness, Customer care, Vulnerable consumers, DDRAC, Systems Standards and service-specific Requirement 3.13.3.

The closing date for this consultation is 22 December 2021. The PSA welcomes all views and will carefully consider all responses and other input it receives.

The new Code will enable a new approach to regulation that will raise standards, prevent harm, be simpler to comply with and be underpinned by smarter enforcement.

We have made a number of changes to the Code that we originally consulted on, including:

• amending the wording to some Standards to add clarity and give further certainty
• removing the requirement for an annual re-opt for subscriptions and replacing it with an annual subscription reminder
• re-introducing the SKIP function for recurring donations
• replacing reference to phone-paid transactions only occurring over “correctly validated HTTPS connections” to “correctly validated and encrypted connections”.

To see the statement, consultation responses and new Code of Practice, click here.

In a year where businesses throughout the economy struggled with the impact of the pandemic, the phone-paid services market performed relatively well, contracting by 2.7%.  

Phone-paid services offered by charities and broadcasters performed especially well with revenues for these parts of the market increasing to £65.8m (up £25.7m) and £154.4m (up £27.8m) respectively.  

The Phone-paid Services Authority (PSA) commissioned Analysys Mason to conduct this year’s Annual Market Review. Based on a survey of 5,000 users of phone-paid services and industry interviews, the Annual Market Review is an in depth look at the phone-paid services market and consumer experiences of it. It also forecasts the market for the following three financial years.  

Read the full report

The Phone-paid Services Authority (PSA) has fined and banned Taptronic FZC from the market after investigating its ‘Fitguru’ subscription alerts service. The service offered consumers fitness training and nutritional videos, which included exercise plans, training videos and video recipes for healthy eating. 

The PSA received a total of 410 complaints from consumers regarding this service. The complainants variously alleged that they hadn’t agreed to be charged by the service and did not know how the Level 2 provider obtained their MSISDNs.

The Tribunal found that Taptronic FZC committed six breaches of the PSA Code of Practice. The breaches were around fairness, consent to charge, complaint handling, failing to register a service, failing to register a service and providing false information to the PSA.

The Tribunal formally reprimanded Taptronic FZC, fined it £1,250,000 and banned it from the market and stopped access to the Fitguru service for six years. It also ordered Taptronic FZC to refund any consumers who claim a refund. 

Read the Taptronic FZC adjudication in full here.

David has chaired the PSA since 2014 and  his current term was due to expire at the end of August. This  comes at a significant point in the delivery of the proposed new Code. The extension ensures continuity of governance during this strategically important time, with the planned launch of the new Code in April 2022. 

David Edmonds said: “I’m delighted to accept this extension as we move towards approval of a new Code of Practice and plan its implementation.  The Code heralds a new phase in our regulatory approach to the current and future phone-paid services market. This will complete our strategic review we initiated almost two years ago and will deliver our progressive new Code for the benefit of consumers and industry alike.”

A review Tribunal has adjusted the sanctions imposed on a company called TCS Combined Solutions Ltd, after finding the company had demonstrated some level of insight into the impact its breaches had on consumers and what it needs to do to make sure they don’t happen again.

Earlier this year, a Tribunal fined TCS £885,000, after finding eight Code breaches. These concerned the company’s subscription service called ‘DiscountMeDirect’, which charged consumers for texts containing vouchers and discount codes. TCS hadn’t obtained consumer consent from all subscribers before charging them for these messages.

At the review hearing, the Tribunal decided that the director of the company had demonstrated a degree of insight and that this was a mitigating factor to the case. The Tribunal was of the view that a reduced fine of £750,000 was proportionate in balancing the additional mitigation put forward by the director with its sanctioning objectives.

The Tribunal also amended the sanctions to include an additional requirement for compliance advice to be sought and implemented to the PSA’s satisfaction. But it amended the three-year prohibition sanction to allow the prohibition to come to an end sooner if this requirement was met (as well as the requirement to pay the fine and administrative charge).

Read the decision in full here.

The Phone-paid Services Authority (PSA) has imposed a number of sanctions on BT Agilemedia, following an investigation into the company’s due diligence, risk assessment and control (DDRAC) procedures.

BT Agilemedia accepted that it had been in breach of three of the PSA’s rules. These breaches were surrounding the adequacy of the DDRAC that BT Agilemedia conducted on its clients. The investigation found, among other things, that BT Agilemedia’s DDRAC processes referred to an earlier version of the PSA Code, and that BT Agilemedia did not adhere to its own DDRAC processes for a lengthy period of time.

BT Agilemedia engaged fully with the PSA’s investigation at all stages and has conducted a full assessment of its DDRAC procedures, including developing and putting in place a remediation plan.

The PSA and BT Agilemedia agreed by consent order that BT Agilemedia will be formally reprimanded and fined £330,000. BT Agilemedia’s co-operation throughout the investigation and the low level of consumer harm were taken into consideration in agreeing the level of the fine.  

Read the consent order and case report here.