With more readers, comes false sense of power?

I recently came across a blog post which made me think about misuse of popularity of your blog and online community.

Author claims that he accidentally pressed a few buttons when he was ringing his friend and that caused a deduction of [x] rs. from his account balance and a "crappy" caller tune is activated.

- He called them, got a negative reply.

- He tweeted about it, his social network said, they had same problem in past and did not get their money back.

- Emailed them to a have a written record (for -? consumer court -?)

- He gets a refund of 0.9[x] and suggests that their should be an additional layer of verification through SMS.

I might be wrong, but having an additional verification channel of SMS would consume extra resources of the company.

I think, people at the mobile company returned the money only as a goodwill gesture or like some random holiday gift. As per my understanding (which might be insufficient), I don't think the company was legally obliged to pay the money back!

Also, the mobile operator has very clearly advertised in their campaigns, that to copy a caller-tune from your friend, dial his number and then press certain combination of keys. If you "accidentally" do that very sequence, pay for it.

Next day, someone might dial a number accidentally from their speed-dial and claim money back because he did not talk.

So, personally I dont think this was an ethical step from the author to try to defame the mobile operator as bullying the customers OR unfairly charging for services.

You have got a great blog, a good readership, use it for more constructive reasons - with great powers, comes great responsibility!

P.S.:

1. I am not giving link of blog post here to respect the annonymity of the author. Although, I am fully aware that with the information given above, a small google search will land you on his blog.

2. I am one of the regular reader of his blog.