Citizen complaints to AKEP increased fivefold last year

2024-05-28 07:15:00, Aktualitet CNA

User complaints to the Electronic and Postal Communications Authority (AKEP) increased fivefold during 2023.

According to information from AKEP, last year 2123 complaints from subscribers of public electronic communications services were filed in this institution, compared to 415 complaints submitted in 2022.

1371 complaints or 65% of the total were related to the problems encountered in the rejection of the requests for mobile number porting by the transfer operator. 752 complaints or about 35% of the total were for other issues such as invoicing, obstacles or delays in closing the contract or switching from postpaid to prepaid tariff plans, quality of service, penalties for early termination of the contract by the subscriber in case of change of the subscriber's address, etc.

About 90% of the volume of complaints filed in AKEP in 2023 were for the entrepreneur One Albania, mainly for number porting and problems related to billing and various aspects of the quality of service offered to subscribers.

Last year, One Albania went through a complicated technical merger process between the two former operators, ONE Telecommunications and Albtelecom, a process that was also reflected in customer service problems.

Following the identified problems and the considerable number of complaints, AKEP has carried out several inspections at the entrepreneur One Albania in 2023, requesting the treatment of the problems identified by the subscribers' complaints, as well as imposing an administrative measure with a fine, in the amount of 10 million ALL.

The administrative measure was decided upon the proposal of the inspection group, due to violations and irregularities found by the last inspection carried out in this company, on August 29 of last year.

The main reason that led to the fine of One Albania was the non-compliance with the legal deadlines for notification before the termination of the service for contract subscribers, according to the provisions of Article 109 of the law "On electronic communications".

The law stipulates that the operator of electronic communications can be fined from 10 million to 50 million lek, if it restricts access to its services, interrupts or terminates the contract of subscribers contrary to the definition of the contract.

The Governing Council of AKEP has assessed that the punishment with a fine, in the minimum limit defined by the law, constitutes the adequate and proportional measure to sanction the violation identified.

In the decision, the Governing Council emphasized the essential importance of the strict respect of the rights of the subscriber by the entrepreneur of electronic communications and the need to take all the necessary and quick measures for the effective provision of these rights. The entrepreneur One Albania was, initially, the subject of a scheduled inspection, carried out from March 6, 2023 to May 4, 2023, at the end of which several violations were found and recommendations were made for their correction.

Meanwhile, following the problems found by AKEP, a significant number of complaints and the complete interruption of the service on August 24, 2023, a new inspection procedure was carried out, with the objective of fulfilling the recommendations from the previous inspection and dealing with the problems of also evidenced by the complaints of various subscribers. At the end of the second procedure, the inspection group proposed the administrative measure with a fine, which was approved by the Governing Council of AKEP.

According to AKEP, the operator One Albania executed (paid) the fine voluntarily./ Monitor.al