Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2011 as a news item: FACUA announced complaints “in the coming weeks”, and the outcome is not reported.
If your phone has ever rung while you were eating, sleeping or in a business meeting, and you looked at the screen and saw the number 1444 (among others) for the third time, I imagine you’d already worked out which company it was. At that point you answer the call to ask, politely or otherwise, that they stop bothering you, that you’re not interested, and would they please not call you again.
All you’ve done is buy time, because in about 4 hours, or 24, they’ll call you again in what seems like a bad joke on the part of a phone company. Well, this practice is completely illegal and counts as telephone harassment, and it’s nothing new for these companies: a year ago they were banned from this kind of phone spam. FACUA, the Spanish consumer association, has collected testimonies from thousands of people who have suffered these abusive practices. In fact, according to the association, two in every 10 people have been victims of telephone harassment in the last 24 hours, and the figure is rising.
In 90% of cases, the user asks the operator not to call again, and in 88% of cases the phone company ignores the request, even though it knows it can be reported and that the practice is already banned. It’s worth adding that the phone company knows most users won’t waste time filing a complaint.
That’s why FACUA has produced a guide called “What spam is and how to deal with it”, so that consumers know their rights when companies engage in this kind of telephone harassment. It isn’t only a common practice among phone companies, but also among insurers and other businesses promoting services and new products.
According to a statement, in the coming weeks FACUA will launch a wave of complaints against these companies, calling for severe penalties in an attempt to put an end to this kind of practice.
Featured image: Petiatil, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
