Business broadband ISP, cloud and technology provider Daisy Communications has managed to irritate some of their UK customers after the provider automatically added a new internet security feature – ‘SafeWeb Plus’ – to their accounts, at a cost of £11.99 ex. VAT per month, without first getting consent.
It seems like only last week that we were reporting on how Onestream had attracted the ire from some of their customers for doing something similar with NordVPN (side note: it was literally last week). But while consumers have plenty of laws to defend them against such practices, it can be a bit more of a grey area when it comes to businesses (they don’t enjoy as many protections).
Nevertheless, there is usually a little something called business ethics, even in B2B transactions, which in most cases helps to ensure that companies play fair with each other. However, in this case, the concept of such ethics appears as if it could have been placed under some strain. This occurred after Daisy Communications added the paid SafeWeb Plus add-on to customer bills without first getting their express consent.
In fairness, Daisy did include a link to an opt-out form, but this isn’t a simple ‘click to decline‘ style affair. Instead, you have to actually waste time filling in the full form, and that’s just so you can avoid being billed for something that you probably didn’t ask for in the first place. This is of course assuming you didn’t a) accidentally overlook the email (easily done in today’s land of daily promotional spam), or b) fail to read much further down to where it mentions the service charge, as well as the opt-out.
Extract from Daisy Communications’ Customer Email
Subject: Protect your business with Daisy Communications
That’s why we’re adding SafeWeb Plus, one of our cyber security solutions, designed to help to keep your business data safe and protected, to your account.
… (then much further down the email) …
From 1 September 2024, you will have SafeWeb Plus added to your account. So, you will see a monthly fee of £11.99 (excluding VAT) added to your bill.
To opt out of SafeWeb Plus please fill in the form here: https://daisycomms.co.uk/h2-safeweb-plus-opt-out
None of this is to say that SafeWeb Plus is a bad service, in fact it could be a very useful feature to have. But is it so hard to simply get the customer’s consent first, before adding it to their bills? According to some of the feedback we’ve seen, this might not be the first time that Daisy has done something like this, although that requires further investigation.
We have contacted Daisy Communications for a comment.