Commerce Commission lays charges against Slingshot, Flip and Orcon
Wednesday, 17 July 2019
Telecommunications providers Slingshot, Flip Services and Orcon face 13 charges laid by the Commerce Commission for allegedly charging false bills to departing customers.
CallPlus Services Limited (trading as Slingshot), Flip Services and Orcon, have been accused of making false representations in invoices they sent to their customers. All three companies are owned by Vocus New Zealand, the third-largest broadband provider.
The charges, filed in the Auckland District Court under the Fair Trading Act, related to conduct during the period January 2, 2012 to March 1, 2018.
The companies have been accused of issuing invoices that included charges to customers for the period after the agreed termination date for their contracts.
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In doing so, the commission alleged, the companies misrepresented their rights to payments because their customers only owed payment for the services provided prior to the agreed termination date.
Vocus NZ chief executive Mark Callander said it was cooperating with the commission's investigation and that Vocus had written to all customers affected, offered refunds and apologised for the mistake.
'Unfortunately, over a six year period, a very small percentage of customers leaving Vocus' residential ISPs who had given more than 30 days' notice of termination may have been billed incorrectly on their final bill. Vocus fixed this issue in early 2018,' Callander said.
Last month Vocus announced that Australian energy company AGL Energy had come forward with an indicative bid at the lower price of A$4.85 (NZ$5.08) a share, which would value Vocus at just over A$3b.
This was just a week after a proposed A$3.3 billion takeover bid from Swedish private equity company EQT Infrastructure fell through.
EQT withdrew its conditional offer to buy Vocus at a price of A$5.25 a share after doing due diligence on the firm.
The Commerce Commission estimated Vocus NZ had about a 13 per cent of the New Zealand fixed-line broadband market, by connections, last year.
The case will be called in the Auckland District Court on July 23.