New Delhi, Nov. 16: Telecom companies have been told to ensure their recovery agents do not abuse or harass bill defaulters.

Telecom regulator Trai today came out with a code of conduct for service providers relating to the recovery of dues. However, the code is voluntary unlike the Reserve Bank of India’s mandatory rules against banks hiring “goons” to recover unpaid loans.

The Trai guidelines say telecom companies must inform customers in advance about their dues before sending recovery agents. They should hire only registered recovery agencies and provide the agents with photo identity cards.

Service providers have been asked to post on their websites their method of due recovery, a code of conduct for recovery agents, and the agencies’ names and phone numbers.

The agents cannot use abusive language or threaten defaulters. Nor can they use “legal terms” — for instance, they cannot threaten subscribers with non-bailable warrants.

Telecom companies have also been asked to set up an effective complaint-handling mechanism.

Trai officials said they had received many complaints about the agents’ strong-arm methods, but these were on the whole not as bad as the ones against certain banks’ loan recovery agents, recently compared to “goons” by the Supreme Court. Loan defaulters have been known to commit suicide after being threatened, humiliated or beaten up by agents.

However, the officials said, they would act against service providers who hand over defaulting subscribers’ “itemised calling lists” — records of the people they have called — to the recovery agents.

Agents have been accused of calling up and abusing the people on the list — who include the customers’ relatives, friends and colleagues — to humiliate the defaulter and blackmail him into paying up.

“We will abide by the regulator’s directions,” a Vodafone spokesperson said. The company said that before outsourcing a case to an agent, it reminded the customer of his dues through text messages and phone calls.

“We also monitor recovery agents’ behaviour with the customer and already have a code of conduct.”

All telecom service providers, including public sector companies BSNL and MTNL, employ or outsource work to recovery agents.