In March, Renaissance Credit, which is owned by Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim group, filed a claim with the Moscow Arbitration Court to recover a little more than 81 million rubles from Megafon and the sms-aggregator Loading, it follows from the file of arbitration cases. What is the essence of the bank’s claims against the operator and the aggregator is not indicated in the materials of the court. We are talking about compensation for losses caused by the unilateral increase in tariffs for the bank’s SMS messages, a representative of Renaissance Credit told Vedomosti. He did not disclose the details of the claim.
Megafon declined to comment on the proceedings. His co-defendant JSC “Loading”, according to SPARK-Interfax, is part of the Svyaznoy group of companies. However, as a representative of Svyaznoy told Vedomosti, the company has not been owned by a cellular retailer since 2016. Zagruzki representatives did not answer Vedomosti’s questions.
The lawsuit against Megafon is similar to the one that Tinkoff Bank filed against MTS at the end of March, said Andrey Yemelin, chairman of the National Council of the Financial Market. From the file of arbitration cases, it follows that the bank intends to claim from the largest Russian operator a little over 1 billion rubles. The claim is related to the decision of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) against operators who abused the monopoly high price for SMS-mailing services, Tinkoff explained.
According to Emelin, the number of lawsuits against operators may increase: “It makes no sense to file a class action lawsuit against four communication companies due to the fact that each bank works with operators on virtually individual terms.”
Mailing prices began to rise in early 2018, after the government obliged credit institutions to inform borrowers about their debts and the remaining credit limit after each transaction. Then the prices for SMS-informing increased by about half, Emelin said earlier. Moreover, if private banks paid about 1.5 rubles for the message, then state – about 0.3 rubles. FAS opened a case against the operators, and already in mid-2018 ordered them to equalize tariffs. MTS, VimpelCom, Megafon and Tele2 tried to challenge the FAS decision, but only Megafon managed to win the case in the first instance, and then defend its position during the appeal. However, the cassation instance overturned the court’s decision. MTS went farthest, trying at the end of 2020 to challenge the FAS decision in the Supreme Court. But, as follows from the file of arbitration cases, at the end of December the court refused to consider this complaint.
“The banks have become more active now, since the fact of the offense recorded by the FAS has been confirmed,” says Alexei Ivanov, Director of the International Center for Competition Law and Policy of the BRICS Countries. It will not be difficult to prove the damage caused by the inflated tariffs for sms-mailings, Ivanov believes: “The operator can make a difference between the tariffs at which the operator delivered his notifications and the tariffs at which a large state bank was served. It will be more difficult to prove the lost profit, connected, for example, with the fact that the bank refused to send any mailings due to high prices ”.
“In my opinion, banks began to file lawsuits for the reason that the courts confirmed the position of the discriminatory principle in the formation of prices for mailings. This means that the banks have more chances to get something from mobile operators, ”says Pavel Ikkert, Managing Partner of Ikkert & Partners Law Firm.
Now the rates for sms-mailings are approximately from 0.3 to 1.5 rubles, says an employee of one of the banks. Pricing can vary depending on the volume of traffic and its nature, that is, on whether data about transactions or advertising is transmitted, he notes. In practice, each bank even now negotiates tariffs individually, the banker emphasizes.
Banks will proceed from the fact that they have suffered losses due to the actions of cellular operators, arguments about operators’ abuse of their dominant position in the market in terms of pricing for mailings will be used, as well as information that state banks paid smaller amounts for the same services. predicts Ickert: “At the same time, banks must thoroughly prove how and why they suffered losses.”
In general, the growth rates of the Russian market of sms-mailings have been declining for several years due to competition from push notifications and instant messengers, says Oksana Pankratova, general director of the Onside agency: “In large banks, the share of push notifications in the total number of messages sent reaches 40-50% “.
VimpelCom and Tele2 did not respond to Vedomosti’s request, a representative of MTS declined to comment.
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