Of course, both participants and spectators may think that individual decisions are wrong, but everyone recognizes that the only reasonable solution is to respect the referee’s decision.
The situation in the market could be compared to a football match, and the referee in a conflict between buyers and sellers is called ARN, The General Complaints Board.
ARN is one independent committee consisting of an equal number of representatives for the consumer and business side. Their decisions are always carefully substantiated, and they have experts in both technology and law. This is the reason why all serious companies respect the decisions – even if they think they are wrong. The companies simply realize the same thing as the athletes, namely that the referee judges.
The companies that refuse to follow ARN’s decision end up on the newspaper Råd & Rön’s “Black List”, and here we usually find a collection of shady car dealers and unserious travel agencies. On the first black list of the year however, we also find a well-known name: Telia. The company has ignored the ARN’s decision in nine new cases, making them one of the worst in all categories.
It’s not illegal to ignore the General Complaints Board’s decision. As little as there are any laws against taking the football with your hand, just as little are there any legal requirements for a company to do as ARN says. The fact that all serious companies still do it is, of course, because they realize that the model is valuable for everyone. If dissatisfied consumers were forced to go to court, it would overburden the judicial system and lead to costly lawsuits – even for the companies.
In other words, guarding “the Swedish model” is central to all of us, and it is scandalous that a large company like Telia repeatedly breaks the rules. Of course, it becomes extra problematic given that large parts of Telia are state-owned. The company is approximately 40 percent owned by the state, which is more than ten times as much as the second largest owner.
We don’t get to know why the state’s own company deliberately violates one of the fundamentals of the Swedish market. The Minister of Industry refers to Telia – and the company refuses to comment on the matter to Råd & Rön.
It is not difficult to understand why: the decision is very difficult to defend.
Of course there is short-term profits for Telia. The conflicts are mainly about the fact that the company has breached agreements to pull in fiber, and it would be expensive to follow ARN’s recommendations. But in the long term, I think it will be even more expensive to end up on the same list as Sweden’s scariest car dealer.
Anyone who refuses to recognize that the judge is judging simply risks losing his credibility. On the football field, there had been a red card.