NEW DELHI: There has been a decline of around 87 per cent in the number of complaints made against wrong activation of value added services (VAS) like mobile internet and caller tunes since July.

The drop has been witnessed after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) issued directives to operators for putting an end to such practices.

On 10 July, TRAI issued directives to telecom operators to take double confirmation from consumers before activating VAS and refund money of subscriber if the complaint is made within 24 hours for services that are valid for more than a day and six hours if a service is valid for a day.

Under the rules, consumers can register complaints about wrongful activation of VAS on a toll-free common number, 155223, irrespective of the network they use.

The regulator observed that total number of complaints received for VAS almost halved from 1,85,468 in July to 95,510 in August.

The VAS activation on mobile network also came down by about 57 per cent from about 70 million in June - when rules were not in place - to 30 million in July.

The data did not incorporate details of state-run BSNL, Sistema Shyam, Videocon and Punjab based Quadrant.