TRAI New Guidelines for VAS Activation and Deactivation

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) issued direction to the service providers, on the procedures of providing Value Added Services (VAS) and for deactivation of the services.

This is in response to many user complaints against the service providers relating to activation without the their consent. TRAI directed all service providers to implement a uniform procedure for taking explicit consent for availing value added services.

Important features in new guidelines are:

1. All VAS activations by any means ( like SMS, USSD, tele calling, Internet etc..) should take a second consent from user without which the service should not be activated. This second consent should be taken by a third party not by the service provider.
2. In case of USSD and SMS mode of activation, no activation response time should be greater than 10 seconds and 60 minutes respectively and in case of non-response, the same should be treated as ‘no activation required’.
3. Common de-activation procedure using toll free number 155223. 
4. All requests for deactivation to be completed in 4 hours
5. 24hrs before auto renewals of the VAS services, information about renewals to be provided to the customers, through SMS and Outbound Dialing (OBD).
6. In  case of wrong activation, the amount shall be refunded within 24 hours of the customer's  request. Such customer requests should be within 24 hours for value added services with validity of more than one day and within 6 hours for value added services with validity of one day.

Do you feel that unwanted VAS activation will be a thing of past with these new guidelines?.