On World Consumer Rights Day, ACM calls attention to consumers’ telemarketing rights

Telemarketing calls have been a huge annoyance for consumers for years now. Many reports are filed with ACM’s consumer information portal ACM ConsuWijzer about this topic. That is why, today on World Consumer Rights Day, the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) launches a video explaning what rules protect consumers in telemarketing calls, and what you as a consumer can do to stop these calls. ACM takes action against misleading and aggressive telemarketing practices, and, over the past few years, has imposed multiple fines for such practices.

This is the first video in a series of videos that ACM will release this year to explain to consumers their rights in an easy-to-understand manner (The video is in Dutch).

Edwin van Houten, Director of ACM’s Consumer Department, explains: “Most consumers don’t want these types of telemarketing calls. That is why it’s good there are strict rules in place that sellers must abide by. If you want a company to stop calling you, exercise your right to object and say to them ‘I don’t want you to call me anymore’. Does a seller keep pushing anyway? If so, be firm: say ‘no’ and hang up the phone.”

Telemarketing calls: what are the rules?

There are many rules aimed at protecting consumers against customer-attraction activities over the phone:

• You can only be called if you have given consent to such calls or if you have been a customer for three years or shorter with the company that is calling you.
• If you want a company to stop calling you, you can exercise your ‘right to object’.
• The company has to make clear at the beginning of the conversation why they are calling you, so that you know it is a telemarketing call.
• You are entitled to a cooling-off period of 14 days if you said ‘yes’ to the offer but you regretted it afterwards.
• With energy or telecom contracts, for example, the offer must be signed on paper first, before you are bound to it.
• Companies often use online surveys or promotional competitions to collect phone numbers. It is therefore important you do not just enter your number everywhere.

Do not take out energy contracts over the phone

Many complaints about telemarketing calls filed with ACM ConsuWijzer concern the sale of energy contracts. Consumers say that they receive unsolicited phone calls and that, at the beginning of the conversation, sellers are not clear about who they are and why they are calling. In many cases, consumers are called under false pretenses, for example, ‘to go over the energy bill’ or ‘to prevent a tariff hike’. ACM even receives reports about sellers of energy contracts that pretend to be ACM employees. ACM does not sell energy contracts, and therefore does not call consumers for that purpose either.

An energy contract is a complicated product. That is why ACM has on numerous occasions already argued for a ban on the sale of energy contracts over the phone. Experience has shown that energy contracts that are sold over the phone are actually never the best offer for consumers. For example, ACM has, over the past few months, issued multiple warnings against the high tariffs of energy company ‘Hollandse Energie Maatschappij’ (HEM). According to the Monitor on the consumer energy market, the fixed contracts that HEM offers through telemarketing calls are 25 percent more expensive than the average price of other suppliers.