• Orange Polska unilaterally changed the terms of its contracts and unlawfully charged fees for maintaining pre-paid phones in cases where subscribers were inactive, e.g. did not top up their accounts.
• The President of UOKiK issued decisions concerning the violation of collective consumer interests and the use of prohibited contractual provisions.
• The fines imposed on Orange Polska amount to over PLN 34 million.

The right to information is one of the basic consumer rights. However, Orange Polska customers who used pre-paid mobile phones were deprived of this right. The simple rules of pre-paid services – i.e. the freedom to use services and no risk of unexpected bills – proved to be a fiction for the company’s customers.

If you don’t use it, you’ll pay for it

Orange Polska introduced a fee for the ‘number maintenance’ service in its pre-paid offer and charged it between May 2022 and January 2024. Consumers were not informed of this at the time of purchase or in the offers presented by the company – neither on starter packs nor on the operator’s website. Despite this, the company required active use of the service. Otherwise, it charged a fee of PLN 5. Customers received an SMS: You have not actively used your phone for the last 30 days. Therefore, tomorrow we will charge you a fee of PLN 5 for maintaining your number in the network. Meanwhile, maintaining the number is the operator’s obligation under the contract and should not be subject to any additional charge.

The company charged the fee every 31 days after the subscriber’s last activity, i.e. making a voice call, sending a text message, using mobile internet, or purchasing an additional service. The fees also applied to customers who had an active service extending the validity of their account – ‘Account valid for one year’ – who were then charged a double number maintenance fee.

The provisions introduced into contracts for pre-paid mobile phone offers are not permitted. They constitute a form of punishment imposed on consumers for failing to perform an activity required by the entrepreneur, such as making a specified number of calls or using mobile data, which should not be the case. Such clauses are contrary to the assumptions underlying a pre-paid offer, i.e. the possibility of using the service freely.

– Orange’s actions were contrary to good commercial practice. I would like to remind you that changing the terms of contracts is unlawful without an appropriate modification clause. Consumers make purchasing decisions on the basis of specific offers and must give their informed consent to any change to an ongoing contractual relationship. They cannot be taken by surprise by additional charges and requirements imposed by the operator – says the President of UOKiK, Tomasz Chróstny.

The total fine imposed on Orange Polska is PLN 34,030,000. The decisions are not final. The company may appeal them in court.

This is another action taken by UOKiK in the case of additional charges for consumers using pre-paid telecommunications services. The President of UOKiK has also brought charges against P4 and Polkomtel.