Court penalises BookMyShow, PVR for charging ‘unfair’ internet handling fees

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Online aggregator BookMyShow and movie hall chain PVR Cinemas has been penalised by a Hyderabad court for levying ‘unfair’ internet handling charges on consumers. The charges, which amounted to nearly one-third of the ticket price, was termed “unfair” by the Hyderabad consumer court, reported The News Minute.

Hyderabad resident Vijay Gopal, who is an Right to Information (RTI) activist and is also the president of the ‘Forum Against Corruption,’ had moved the consumer rights court back in 2019 against the ticket booking platforms for levying extra charges without explicit authorisation.

PVR and BookMyShow will each have to pay Rs 5,000 towards the Consumer Legal Aid Account of the Hyderabad court. They will also have to pay Rs 25,000 as compensation to plaintiff Vijay Gopal along with an additional Rs 1,000 towards litigation costs.

The Hyderabad District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission has directed both PVR and BookMyShow to not levy extra fee amounting to more than Rs 6. This Rs 6 cap has been imposed as per rules in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh along with other applicable facilitation charges as laid down by Section 6A of The IT Act, 2000.

The order dubbed the practice “unfair” and “illegal” and said: “...this Forum is constrained to hold that the additional amount of Rs 41.78/- per two tickets under the head ‘Internet Handling Charges’...amounts to unfair trade practice as defined under Section 2(1)of the Consumer Protection Act.”

Vijay had filed a case against the online ticket booking portals alleging that these portals were exploiting the consumers by levying an extra gateway fee in the form of “internet handling charges.” In this regard, he had also approached the Reserve Bank of India and the Department of Information Technology under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology through RTIs.

The RTI activist who had pointed out the illegal fees being levied has said it is unfortunate that BookMyShow was fined only Rs 5,000 for “20 years of wrongful gains”.

Vijay even wondered as to why the court allowed levying of Rs 6 as fee, since BookMyShow does not have either state government or Centre’s authorisation allowing collection of internet handling fee.