D

avid Tobing, the lawyer suing PT Telkomsel for allegedly billing him for unordered cell phone services, has rejected a judge’s request to settle the dispute through mediation.

In the case’s first hearing at the Central Jakarta District Court, presiding judge Andi Risa Jaya ordered the plaintiff and defendant into non-binding judicial mediation before proceeding.

David said the order was only a formality. “I do not want to go through the mediation stage and want to proceed directly to the next stage. However, I respect the judge’s order and have agreed to meet a mediating judge,” David told The Jakarta Post on Thursday after the hearing ended.

The panel of judges gave him one week to decide if he would agree to a court-mediated settlement, according to David.

David recently filed a lawsuit against Telkomsel for Rp 90,000 (US$10.15) in damages, claiming he had received nine text messages in August and September telling him about a service he never ordered.

The damages he is seeking are substantially less than the Rp 1 million fee that he paid to file the lawsuit. David said he rejected mediation to teach Telkomsel to respect consumer rights.

“I want operators to no longer take their bad behavior lightly. This will be a lesson for them to respect their clients. They must not assume that consumers will just forget about mistreatment and agree to financial compensation,” he said.

In his lawsuit, David also demanded the cellular service provider stop sending messages to customers offering unauthorized premium services.

Last week, bowing to pressure from the Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory Body (BRTI), 10 cellular service providers, all members of the Indonesian Cellular Phone Provider Association (ATSI), agreed to stop broadcasting SMS messages, pop-ups and voice messages containing promotions provided by third parties.

Telkomsel’s lawyer, Ignatius Andy, said that the company had expected David to agree to mediation.

“We are open to any type of negotiation. The rights of consumers are the most important thing,” he said as quoted by kompas.com.

Meanwhile, the Witness and Victim Protection Agency (LPSK) said on Thursday that it would provide protection to one of David’s clients, Feri Kuntoro, who previously filed a cellular phone credit theft report against the Colibri Network in early October.

“This is for legal protection, not personal protection. This is to protect Feri as a victim and complainant,” David said.

The Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI) said that complaints against telecommunications providers comprised 17.9 percent of all complaints recorded by the foundation in 2010, up from 9.6 percent in 2009.

Telecommunication companies reaped up to 40 percent of an estimated Rp 100 billion in content provision charges every month, the YKLI said.