Internet service provider America Online (AOL) has been fined EUR30,000 by a French court for "abusive and illegal" clauses contained in its customer contracts, the French Consumers Union (UFC) announced last week.
The UFC sued AOL over 38 clauses contained in the contracts which it argued were in contravention of French law. Of these, 21 were found by the court to be abusive, and 11 were ruled to be illegal.
According to reports, provisions in the contracts which allowed AOL to decline responsibility for interruptions in service, and to charge dial-up customers for the full 60 seconds of every minute started were among those which were examined by the court.
A clause which stated that although AOL could break the agreement without warning, customers could not terminate the relationship without incurring a penalty was also scrutinised.
In addition to the fine, AOL has reportedly been ordered to publish the verdict in three leading Paris newspapers, and on its French homepage, and to inform clients by e-mail over the next month. It has also been ordered to remove the offending clauses from future contracts, and to disregard them in existing agreements.
AOL has announced that it intends to appeal the ruling.
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