37% of 10,000 Telecommunication Dispute Resolution Consultations Last Year Were Related to Service Contracts

Mr. Kim (alias), who is over sixty years old, appealed to the Korea Communications Dispute Mediation Committee (KCDMC) with grievances after being forced by a dealership employee to return his existing device when subscribing to a mobile phone service and not receiving the promised discount. The KCDMC identified circumstances where the dealership induced device returns under the pretext of a discount but failed to provide the discount benefits. They also confirmed that the subscriber’s handwritten signature was missing on the application form. The KCDMC proposed a mediation plan to allow service termination without penalty fees, waive all outstanding charges, and pay consolation money to the applicant for the inconvenience caused.

On the 3rd, the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) announced the publication of the "Communications Dispute Mediation Casebook," which contains such cases. Since last year, the KCC has been publishing casebooks containing similar mediation cases to assist in resolving disputes between telecommunications service users and telecommunication service providers.

According to the casebook, a total of 10,080 communications dispute mediation consultations were received last year via phone, internet, and email. Among these, phone consultations accounted for 98.6% (9,936 cases).

By category, "service contract-related" issues were the most common at 37.4%, followed by "important information explanation or notification-related" at 21.9%, "quality-related" at 20.6%, and "application guidance and others" at 20.1%.

The number of dispute mediation applications submitted to the committee after consultations was 1,170. As of the end of last year, 42 cases (3.6%) were in the process of mediation with proposed settlement plans, and fact-finding was underway for 122 cases (10.4%).

Chapter 1 of the casebook introduces the KCDMC and explains the mediation procedures, Chapter 2 covers the status of dispute consultations and mediation case handling, and Chapter 3 contains communications dispute mediation cases that may serve as references for users.

The communications dispute mediation cases include 100 significant major cases selected from those received and processed by the KCDMC during 2021. Each case is composed of an overview, the positions of the mediation parties, fact-finding results, reasons for mediation based on legal judgments, and pre-mediation settlement details.

Additionally, following the amendment of the Telecommunications Business Act in September 2021, disputes related to payment, cancellation, or refund of usage fees in app markets were included in the scope of mediation. Consequently, "Application (App) Market-related Disputes" were added as a new category in the communications dispute mediation case types.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.