Many local education boards have been found tempting parents and
students into paying much more than normal to get exam results by posting
misleading texting service ads on their official websites.
N.T.M., a mother in the southern
province of Binh Phuoc, said that she was charged VND10,000 (US$0.48), 29 times
more expensive than a normal SMS between mobile subscribers, after texting to a
number on the provincial education board’s website to get her son’s test scores
on this month’s exam to gain admission to the tenth-grade at a local high
school.
The site lured visitors to use
the texting service with a catchy ad on the home page but it did not specify
the fees that would be charged.
“The school should have announced
the scores publicly on the Internet,” the mother complained.
A teacher in Binh Phuoc also had
to pay VND20,000 ($0.96) for sending two text messages to the same number to
seek for her niece’s scores on the exam.
“Many other parents were ripped
off the same way as me,” she grumbled.
Tuoi Tre reporters visited the
websites of many other education boards across the country and discovered that
they also posted similar texting service ads, with no fees included.
Their checking revealed that the
fees ranged between VND2,000 ($0.09) and VND10,000 per SMS.
A jurist told Tuoi Tre that these
education boards violated a government decree on telecommunications that
prevents state agencies from 'trading in' exam scores like this.
TUOI TRE
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