Nowo changed customer contracts without consent. It is Digi that will pay 230 thousand euros

Romanian company bought Nowo, which increased customer rates without them having been correctly informed within the legal period.

Anacom’s investigations, which date back to 2016 and 2017, resulted in administrative proceedings against the four telecommunications operators in 2022: Meo, Nos, Vodafone and Nowo.

Now, according to , Nowo was subject to a fine of around a third of the amount originally mentioned in 2022 (664 thousand euros). You will have to pay R$ 230 thousand, an amount to be paid by Digi, which last year acquired the operator.

The four companies investigated were, in 2022, subject to paying a collective fine of 15 million euros, for having increased tariffs without informing customers within the stipulated period about their right to terminate contracts. It would have had “an impact on all approximately 11 million subscribers”.

In some cases, Público explains, the customer was only informed about the concrete value of the increase “long after they had been informed that prices would increase”.

Some behaviors considered “serious” by the Court were the non-disclosure of the concrete value of the increase “made available in the form and place indicated in the communication of the contractual change”.

According to the Electronic Communications Law, companies must notify “any change in contractual conditions to end users, in a clear, understandable manner and in durable form, with pat least one month in advance, and must inform them, in the same communication and whenever applicable, of their right to terminate the contract free of charge, if they do not accept the new conditions”.

The fine was considered by the Lisbon Court of Appeal as “proportional, adequate and fair”, considering “the seriousness of the facts” and “the high number of people affected” by the crime.