The digital content company "Iqotech" continues to break absurd records: Among the approximately 100,000 warning letters it sent to "debtors," the company also sent a warning letter before taking legal action to a minor who was only 9 years old when she allegedly hired its content services. The Afula Small Claims Court ordered the company to compensate the frightened girl and her father in the amount of 1,000 shekels, sending a clear message to Iqotech that it will cease its campaign of intimidation of its victims, especially when it cannot prove their alleged debt.
The phenomenon known as "IQTech victims" is well known in the economy, and has even been widely discussed in the Knesset. The company sent hundreds of thousands of warning letters before taking legal action to mobile phone owners - many of whom are minors - claiming that they had supposedly legally registered for IQTech content services at various times between 2005 and 2010. In many cases, the company's "service consumers" claimed that they had never entered into any agreement with the company, and that it was unclear to them why the demand was sent to them.
Despite a debate in the Knesset about the company's intimidation methods, the "successful method" and its corrupt conduct, so far the courts are the only ones actually leading the fight against the company. This, while the authorities are not providing a solution to all those consumers in distress, who are subject to aggressive threats from collection agencies. Recently, a number of judgments have been issued - some in small claims courts - against the company, and the trend of the courts to protect consumers from the company continues to gain momentum.
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After a series of point victories in various courts in recent months, the Consumer Council recently filed a request to approve a class action lawsuit against Iqiotech in the amount of NIS 300 million, and it is possible that this lawsuit will lead to the granting of relief to the main group of victims.
""Difficult mental state""
Meanwhile, various victims continue to receive a response to the "Iquiotech problem" in the courts. The story of the company's current victim began in December last year, when the father of the minor - now 14 years old - opened a letter sent to his daughter from the company, and was shocked to discover that the company was demanding more than 1,000 shekels from his daughter for services she allegedly received from the company when she was only 9 years old. The letter, sent to the girl by attorney Mordechai Nissim on behalf of the Iquiotech company, was titled: "Demand for payment of debt and notice before taking proceedings," and it was alleged that the minor owed the company a total of 1,070 shekels, and that she was required to pay the debt within two weeks. If she did not do so, or did not explain why she did not have to pay, the lawyer stated in the letter, legal proceedings would be taken against her to collect the debt. The letter was signed with the firm words: "An additional notice will not be sent.".
The shocked father was not completely frightened by the wording of the threatening letter. When he read the letter, he noticed that his minor daughter was 9 years old at the time of the transaction alleged in the letter, and therefore he understood that she had not entered into a binding agreement with IQTech. He also noticed that the ID card number appearing in the notice did not belong to his daughter, and that the telephone number appearing in the demand did not belong to him or to any of his family members. Armed with these findings, the father sent a letter to the Nissim Law Firm, in which he asked to receive the document of the transaction with IQTech mentioned in the notice. When he did not receive a response, he sent the letter repeatedly by fax - no less than five times - and later, he even sent his letter by registered mail.
In its defense to the lawsuit, Iqiotech claimed that the minor daughter signed an internet agreement with it. In addition, the company requested to file a counterclaim against the father and daughter, and sue them for the daughter's debt. Later, despite the fact that the court rejected the request to file a counterclaim, Iqiotech filed the counterclaim, in which the father and minor daughter were sued to pay Iqiotech a total of 2,280 shekels.
""Fear is not disconnected from reality""
At the beginning of the month, the Afula Small Claims Court rejected Iqiotech's claim and accepted the father and daughter's claim, while requiring the company to pay the minor and her father compensation in the amount of 1,300 shekels for the expenses, hassle, and mental anguish caused to them.
The senior registrar, Rabia Jabali, also criticized the wording of the warning letters and the company's conduct in her decision, noting that "the warning was not sent in a vacuum. The father testified that in his Internet searches he found a lot of material about Iqotech and forums of the company's victims, and this caused him to panic. And the company's attorney also claimed that the company had sued over 100,000 people - so the plaintiff's fear that the company would sue him - was not disconnected from reality." The decision also stated that "in this case, the warning was sent unlawfully and subjectively struck fear in the hearts of the father and daughter. But also, objectively, the way the warning was worded would strike fear in the heart of a law-abiding citizen who claims to have no debt.".
The Registrar also described the identification steps that IQOtech performs when drawing up an agreement with a cellular device owner, which includes two "double identification" steps of the user: entering an ID number and receiving a text message (SMS) with a user code that is entered via the computer. Typing the code constitutes approval to receive Internet content, and after this stage, billing begins for receiving services from the company. In this matter, it was determined that IQOtech did not prove that the minor received a text message with a user code and that she entered the user code on the computer, "and thus did not prove that the conditions for billing were met." It also emerged that the ID number entered belonged to the minor's mother, but the phone number entered was never owned by any member of the family.
""The question arises: Why doesn't the company check that the second stage of the double identification has indeed taken place before sending a warning letter? Why is the check only done retrospectively and only after receiving a request?" the registrar wondered, adding: "A warning letter from a lawyer is no small matter. I believe that the emotional attitude that a letter such as this evokes in its recipient is an element that must be taken into account before sending the warning letter.".
This ruling follows a ruling issued in small claims court about a month ago in the case of another victim of Equitech - a ruling in which the judge of the small claims court, Yossi Torres, was not lazy in dissecting the company's claims, clause by clause, and thus exposed its working methods - from the deliberate sending of split messages in order to collect a separate payment for each message, to suspicion of forging the signature. The judge then firmly ruled that Equitech did not meet the burden of proof, and that the plaintiff was entitled to receive her money back: NIS 1,020 plus expenses of NIS 800.
Even if the amounts awarded in small claims courts do not appear to reflect the extent of the fraud committed by the company - and are determined according to one specific claim or another - these rulings constitute an encouraging message to all those harmed by the company's conduct, and strengthen their hand in their fight against attempts to collect amounts from them illegally.
