I’ve received an invoice from a phone-sex company claiming I made calls to a regular geographic number, such as 040 or 08. Do I have to pay the invoice?

Paid telephone services refer to the services accessed with the prefixes 0900, 0939, 0944, and 099, as well as the mobile paid telephone services that use short numbers for purchasing goods and services. So-called separately billed services, which are billed directly by a company instead of via the phone bill, and do not use the prefixes listed above, are entirely outside the scope of the Telecommunications Advisors’ mission. We still want to try to inform about what applies to this type of service and hope it can be of some guidance.

What primarily distinguishes separately billed services from paid telephone services is that there is no underlying agreement that regulates the subscription holder’s payment obligation. For paid telephone services that are charged on the phone bill, the subscription holder has taken on the responsibility to cover all costs associated with telephony from the current subscription, including paid telephone services. In separately billed services, this contractual connection does not exist. If someone calls a service of this kind on a regular regional phone number, a cost has arisen on the regular phone bill for a phone call, and the company in question has considered that there is some form of agreement on the sale of service in connection with the phone call.

The first part is quite simple, it is naturally the subscription holder’s obligation to pay what the phone calls have cost, but this cost is only for a regular call, for example to Malmö, and in the context, usually not particularly burdensome. The second part is significantly more questionable. One should remember that if a creditor, that is, the specified company, claims that there is a debt based on a valid agreement, it is also the creditor’s obligation to be able to prove this. It is therefore the companies that must prove that the alleged agreement was entered into by the person who is listed as the recipient of the invoice. This person should naturally be of legal age. It is not the invoice recipient who must prove that they did not actually enter into the agreement.

If a company presents some sort of technical evidence that the phone call was made at a certain time, that does not in itself constitute proof that it is precisely the invoice recipient who made it. The same argumentation naturally applies if someone has entered a personal identification number. A personal identification number, any one, can be obtained without problem and proves nothing in itself.

The Consumer Agency advocates that one should dispute the invoice in a short letter, and it is of course something that can be done. In that case, one should be brief and only note that one disputes the invoice on legal grounds and request that the company provide evidence that it is the invoice recipient who entered into the current agreement.

In summary, separately billed services are not paid call services of the type that a subscription holder is responsible for. They are just a type of service sold via phone and for which the usual rules on contract formation apply.