Consultations

In this consultation, PSA put forward proposals to clarify the PSA’s expectations as to how long providers will retain certain types of Relevant Data, including personal data, so that the PSA can request such data in the event of an investigation into the service or provider. This is in light of changes in May 2018 to UK legislation concerning the protection and processing of personal data. aimm worked with members to get feedback from across the industry and submitted a considered response.

The PSA has undertaken a review of the regulatory framework underpinning phone-paid subscriptions to assess its effectiveness and identify whether and what changes are required to address the issues without inadvertently impacting on those services that are already operating effectively. On the 4th April The Phone-paid Services Authority (PSA) published an addendum to its consultation on changes to the regulatory framework for phone-paid subscription services. They also extended the deadline for responses to this consultation. aimm submitted their response based on Members feedback by the deadline.

PSA called for inputs into the review of phone-paid subscription services on the 6th September. This input period finished on the 15th October. aimm held meetings and calls with our members across the industry on their views and feedback on this consultation, and submitted our response based on the consolidated views from across the membership.

When aimm and members introduced the potential for Society Lotteries to utilise a shortcode based call-to-action and mobile-bill payment for lottery tickets, we identified 5 Guidance documents, 2 Special Conditions requirements and one notice document that providers of Society Lotteries needed to be aware of as a result of introducing premium rate as well as the PSA Code of Practice. Society Lotteries are already heavily regulated by the Gambling Commission under the 2005 Gambling Act. To improve regularity simplicity, PSA and aimm collaborated on condensing some of the distributed PSA requirements into a single guidance document and to review the necessity of Special Conditions for  this product as the regulatory environment created by the Gambling Commission already protects consumers regardless of payment mechanism. PSA's proposal is that Special Conditions must exist and in addition they added excessive requirements to promotional material that go over and above the Gambling Commissions requirements for promotion. This will damage the simplicity of the shortcode based call-to-action that we already experience on television, radio and posters for charity donations and other products.  Certain key information needs to be available to consumers on promotions but PSA's proposals add clutter, causing rather than preventing  consumer confusion. We also believe that PSA has taken an overly cautionary line using experiences from affiliate promoted online competitions to push through additional conditions for Society Lotteries without a sufficient risk assessment that takes into consideration the predominantly  blue-chip brands that will promote their fundraising lotteries and raffles. aimm's final response is linked here. We welcome any member comments or queries on our response.

070 numbers were originally designed to be used as a personal or ‘follow-me’ redirect type services with a higher than normal termination rate so that companies can fund the service and redirection costs on behalf of  the end user. Over the years, this range has been used to provide an increasing number of services, from hospital bedside phones to advertising response numbers and sophisticated personal assistant type services. As the calling party pays for the call to the 070 which on some networks can exceed £1 per minute and with the number being confused with a mobile number, Ofcom have reviewed the market and set our their proposals to regulate the termination fee. aimm believes that measures are required to improve pricing transparency for consumers and that high termination fee products (which determine the high consumer charges) could be moved over time to another range to provide number range transparency. There also has been fraud on this range taking advantage of the mobile-looking number. Ofcoms proposals however, in aimm's opinion would destroy the current range of services which are extensively  used by consumers and small businesses. We too often see regulatory actions chucking out both the baby and the bathwater, and we believe that Ofcom should have engaged with the 30+ companies providing 070 services to understand the range of services that are provided, a lot of which migrated to 070 after Ofcom's 2015 NGCS review resulted in a decimation of the 08 services market due to high Access Fees.   Some of the statistics used to bolster Ofcom's case are four years old and some are based on unverifiable data. We believe a national regulator should not use old data to examine issues as a lot of the historical issues have been resolved by improved industry standards. Our response lays out our members concerns and proposes alternative solutions that could easily be considered.