India's Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum has fined Vodafone Essar a total of Rs 20,000 (US$416) for activating a "cheap and vulgar" caller tune on a lawyer's mobile phone without her consent.
Neena Chakravorty said that the a ringback (or caller) tune, "Bheegi bheegi raton mein", was delivered to her mobile phone last December, shattering her professional integrity as it carried a "nonsense message of love and lust".
She said that the tune had been loaded onto her phone whilst she was in the middle of a divorce lawsuit - leading to embaresment every time her client called her. It took the firm some two weeks to remove the caller tune from her phone line.
Vodafone Essar said that the caller tune could not have been activated automatically, and the customer would have had to select the option from her menu.
The court however decided that Vodafone's failure to respond to customer requests to disable the caller tune made it liable and imposed the fine.
Posted to the site on 10th November 2008
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/34551.php