Bezeq Israeli Telecommunication Co. Ltd. (TASE: BEZQ) launched an anti-virus service in 2006, which the company says provides protection against viruses and spyware. The McAfee-made software is not provided through a network; customers subscribing to the service must download it from the Bezeq website and install it on their PCs. Bezeq has taken pride in the success of the service over the years, and currently has 100,000-200,000 users for it providing the company with revenue totaling tens of millions of shekels a year.
"Globes" has learned, however, that most of the customers for the service are unaware that they are subscribing to it, and 80%-90% of them have not downloaded the necessary software, even though they have been paying for it for many years. In many cases, these are Internet subscribers who were added to the service by Bezeq service representatives in the course of upgrading the subscribers' Internet speed. The representatives receive a commission on each sale, without the customers realizing that they are paying for the service.
Due to the structure of Bezeq's Internet prices, a customer upgrading his surfing speed is likely to pay less, because Bezeq's prices are lower in the first year of subscription, and are then raised. Customers upgrading their surfing speed therefore pay the same price as before the upgrade even though they are now subscribers to the anti-virus program, because the price of the upgraded speed plus the anti-virus cost is more or less equal to the price they were paying after the first year of subscription at their previous surfing speed.
Even worse, Bezeq is well aware when a customer has not downloaded the anti-virus software, because it has an unmistakable indication of this for each customer. In most cases, Bezeq has actually been charging the customer NIS 10 a month for over 10 years, and its revenue from this is probably in the hundreds of millions of shekels, while the company is perfectly aware that it the service is not being provided to the customers.
Bezeq's conduct in this matter, together with the money it takes from customers for maintenance on old Zamir and Efroni telephone models no longer in use, as reported in "Globes," indicate that Bezeq has systematized such practices, while the Ministry of Communications is doing nothing about it.
Bezeq said in response, "The company provides a number of added value services to customers who want them, some free of charge, such as cloud storage and free Wifi, and some for payment, such as the anti-virus service. The company is continually bolstering the usefulness of these services, and this is also true for the anti-virus software."
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on February 2, 2017
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