The repression of fraud transmitted to the Prosecutor of the Republic of the judicial court of Paris the conclusions of its investigation concerning suspicions of misleading commercial practices of the Indexia group, it announced Monday in a press release.
Through the intermediary of several companies such as SFAM, the Indexia group markets, among other things, services to insure telephones and computers as well as subscriptions to obtain reductions after purchase (cashback).
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Deceptive practices
The investigation, carried out over several months, revealed practices consisting in misleading consumers wishing to stop direct debits, cancel their subscriptions and be reimbursed for the sums debited after termination of their contract, that their requests had been taken into account. , even effective, reported the Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF). If these practices were to be proven, they would be particularly seriousas they would constitute deceptive commercial practices, she added.
When I bought my computer in 2015, I agreed to take out insurance, without paying attention to the levies, testifies to AFP Paola, a former client of SFAM. When I realized that the amounts were increasing each month, I asked my bank to stop the charges and I harassed the company by telephone who assured me that I would be well reimbursed. I ended up giving up and never got the 500 euros that had been taken from me in four years, she confides.
But other abused customers alerted the consumer association UFC-Que Choisir and sent reports to the DGCCRF, which conducted an initial investigation in 2018 and searched the headquarters of the SFAM.
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10 million euros fine
The investigation concluded the following year with a fine of 10million euros accepted by the SFAM, which turned out to be no noticeable impact on the growth of the group.
However, the DGCCRF continued to receive hundreds of reports according to UFC-Que Choisir, which found that the companies of the Indexia group would have resorted to practices, if they were true, with the sole objective that everyone give upexplains AFP Raphael Bartlom, head of the legal department of the consumer association.
The latter hopes that this time the investigation will lead to the rapid opening of a trial, so that consumers can be compensated automatically. After similar complaintsthe Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority on 2 March banned SFAM’s Belgian subsidiary, Switch, from marketing its insurance products in the country.
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