“Get €16.87 refunded on your order”. These are pop-up windows that appear after an order at Fnac or with the SNCF. Often ignored because they are assimilated to a scam or phishing, they seem to say that the consumer can benefit from an immediate refund in a few clicks, and it is not easy to identify their source. After seven months of waiting for an answer to a question posed to the Minister of Transport Clément Beaune, the LREM deputy for the 1st district of Vendée, Philippe Latombe, faced a wall. For the government, these cashbacks are completely legal and have their place on all sites, even that of the SNCF. The MP informed the Digital that he was not going to stop there.
A system already denounced in Italy
In December 2022, Philippe Latombe thus interviewed Clément Beaune, wishing “find out whether the minister plans to intervene with the latter [la SNCF] so that it puts an end to this contract and, why not, to instruct the General Directorate for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Prevention, to investigate the modus operandi cashback companies”. But his request took many months to make its way to the minister’s office and out. Especially since she is content to explain that “cashback is a legal and now common practice in e-commerce” and “the SNCF has freedom of commercial management”.
“I did not expect this response, or at least a slightly more polite responseannoyed the MP. I was told that we couldn’t do much because it’s the SNCF, etc., but the answer doesn’t tell me that at all. She tells me that cashback is legal, and move around, there’s nothing to do”. However, the MEP would like to point out that the company Webloyalty, which offers these solutions, was sentenced in 2014 to a fine of €800,000 by the Italian competition authority, which then estimated that 62% of Internet users who had paid money to the company would have subscribed to the subscription without even realizing it.
“It traumatizes me to have an answer of this level, where we don’t even put the formsadds Philippe Latombe. All those who use this service are rather old people who did not realize that they were subscribing”. Because that’s what gets in the way of this system, which promises immediate reimbursement, and a simple button “continue” : the lack of transparency. It is only by accessing the general conditions of the service that one can read that access to these reimbursement offers is made after subscription to a monthly subscription of several euros. On social networks or in Google reviews, there are many comments castigating the service and the terms of unsubscribing to it.
“Making Hay”
In a tweet, Philippe Latombe told a user that he did not intend to be satisfied with this response from the office of the Minister of Transport. Asked about the rest, the deputy explains to us that he contacted Clément Beaune to ask him for an interview next Tuesday on the sidelines of the questions to the government. It also counts “relaunch the DGCCRF”, and “seize consumer associations to make hay around it”.
Although he has not yet received any particular support from his fellow deputies, Philippe Latombe indicates that he has spoken about it with senior officials who have explained to him that they “do not understand, morally, how it is possible to have this cashback”. “On Fnac, either it’s legal or it’s notreplies the deputy to a question on the difference between these offers on a site like Fnac or on that of the SNCF. On the SNCF we are almost on a public service, which justifies that we currently have a bill to reinject 4 billion euros into it. If you find it legal, do the same cashback system on the tax site”.
Finally, Philippe Latombe plans to take advantage of the debates on the bill aimed at securing and regulating the digital space and its famous “scam filter” to start a discussion: “I will see how I can ban this type of operation in the public and parapublic sphere”.