Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio

The Direction of Investigations for the Protection of Users of Communications Services of the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce (hereinafter Direction) carried out the monitoring, analysis and evaluation of more than sixty (60) complaints filed by users of the Company “Telecomunicaciones de Bogotá” (hereinafter ETB), who affirmed that the company had prevented them from exercising their right to terminate their contract, at any time, with the simple expression of their will.

As a result of the above-mentioned investigation, the Direction was able to establish that the telecommunications provider, ETB, did not process the termination requests submitted by its users and, instead: (i) continued to provide and bill for the service; (ii) in other cases, imposed unreasonable conditions for processing the termination requests, such as being up to date in the payment of the service, demanding the user to assist a physical office of customer service, asking for a writing submission of the request that justified the termination of the contract and; iii) in several of the examined cases, despite interrupting the service to the user, ETB continued to generate charges for a service that was not provided.

The aforementioned led to the imposition of a fine $1,749 million Colombian pesos (approximately $576 thousand dollars), since the company failed to comply with the user’s requests and with the Colombian legislation in the matter.