• President of UOKiK Tomasz Chróstny is planning to propose a modification of the mechanism for settling the unused money from pre-paid cards in the telecommunications law.
• The proposal was consulted with Minister Janusz Cieszyński, who welcomed it and assured that an appropriate amendment would be introduced to the legislative process.
• The issue of refunding unused funds from the pre-paid account when choosing a new telecommunications company was investigated by the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection.

The President of UOKiK has been monitoring the telecommunications market for many years, checking, among other things, whether the largest mobile operators refund consumers unused money when their pre-paid accounts expire. In 2020, President of UOKiK Tomasz Chróstny issued four decisions in this case. He imposed a fine of over PLN 20 million on Polkomtel (Plus network operator). He also obliged T-Mobile, Orange and P4 (Play network operator) to return money to the recipients.

The President of UOKiK is planning to propose a modification of the mechanism for settling unused pre-paid funds in the forthcoming Electronic Communications Law, providing for transfer of the unused pre-paid funds to the Broadband Fund account. "We are going to propose a change to the wording of the article so that when registering a pre-paid card, the consumer can provide a bank account number to which they will automatically receive a refund of unused money. If you do not provide your account number, it will not block you from getting your money back when your pre-paid card expires or you switch to another mobile network operator. The replenishment of the Broadband Fund will occur when both ways of fund recovery are not used by the consumer," explains President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection Tomasz Chróstny.

In these exceptional situations, money unclaimed by the consumers when their pre-paid accounts expire will contribute to the development of telecommunications in Poland.

"Telecommunications operators have been keeping these funds for years. Our decisions have changed the attitude of mobile operators towards this issue. Transfer of unclaimed funds from pre-paid cards to the Broadband Fund only in exceptional situations was one of the legal changes discussed with Minister Cieszyński, which has received his approval," states the President of UOKiK.

The issue of refunding unused funds from the pre-paid account when choosing a new telecommunications company is already regulated at the EU level. The European Electronic Communications Code came into force in December 2018. It contains a provision which states that when changing the operator, the current pre-paid service providers must, at the consumer's request, return all funds remaining on the account. They may charge a fee commensurate with the actual costs they incurred due to this operation, provided that this is specified in the contract. This EU law must be implemented in Polish law. In some European countries, including Germany, Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Spain, such a refund has been the rule for a long time.

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