• President of UOKiK has pressed charges to UPC Polska, the company is at risk of a fine of up to 10% of its turnover.
• UPC customers have been charged with a fee for additional TV channels and a higher Internet speed despite the fact that they had not ordered those services.
• New services should be rendered upon a request or upon a previous consent of consumers.

As part of the scheme “More Benefits for You”, the UPC Polska company, in the period from 1 February 2019 and 1 April 2022, increased the subscription fee to customers with agreements concluded for indefinite time. Consumers received messages from the company from which they found that they would have access to more channels (including premium ones) or faster Internet. This involved launching an additional fee ranging from PLN 4 to PLN 8 depending on the package held. Subscribers could fully terminate the agreement concluded with the company, submit a resignation from those changes prior to their launch or take advantage of the offer; however, they still had a capacity, for 6 months, to opt out of it and be reimbursed for the difference as part of their subscription fee. All those options meant, though, that the burden of a failure to express consent to the new services which they had not ordered would be transferred onto consumers. In agreements concluded with consumers, such action is legally prohibited.

The President of UOKiK is of the opinion that the scheme “More Benefits for You” assumed rendition of services of other parameters than the ones ordered by consumers. These were new products for them and the entrepreneur did not obtain a consent or an explicit declaration of will of customers regarding their launch and charging some additional fees.

– Charging fees for products and services not ordered is inadmissible. We should remember that launching any services, adding them against a fee to a previously concluded agreement must be performed upon an explicit and informed consent of consumers and absence of a response does not constitute such a consent. The UPC Polska company has imposed on its customers the shape of products and a higher price for them and then obligated them to take up actions aimed at blocking the changes for which they had not applied – says President of UOKiK, Tomasz Chróstny.

The situation was not changed by the fact that UPC Polska enabled its customers to opt out of new services within 6 months free of any charge. An entrepreneur should not unilaterally change the scope of the services rendered to launch new ones and then require of consumers to pay a higher subscription fee for products not ordered or opt out of the new terms and conditions.

Following the Act on Consumer Rights (Article 5), the rendition, by an entrepreneur, of a service not ordered by a consumer, such as the one proposed by UPC, shall be made at the risk of the entrepreneur and shall not impose any obligations on the consumer. If the charges are confirmed, UPC Polska will face a fine of up to 10% of its turnover.