The Competition and Market Authority has closed the three preliminary investigations for unfair commercial practices, sanctioning Wind Tre, Telecom Italia and Vodafone Italia for a total amount of 3,2 million euros. According to the Antitrust, the three telecommunications companies engaged in aggressive conduct, in violation of articles 24 and 25 of the Consumer Code, concerning the sending to customers, allegedly in default, of payment reminder letters containing the threat of entering their name in a database, called SIMo.I.Tel. , not yet operational and with an unspecified purpose, in order to induce them to pay the requested charges.
The Authority ascertained that, although only the names of "intentional defaulting" customers should have been entered in this database according to certain requirements, the three operators also sent reminders to customers who did not qualify as such because they lack all the requirements for registration, including users who could challenge the legitimacy of the debt claimed by the operator.
Indication of possible registration in SIMo.I.Tel. it was deemed by the Authority to be suitable for influencing the recipients of the reminder communication to pay the sums requested of them. In fact, the operators, exploiting the threat of having recourse to an instrument foreseen as a form of self-protection of the market against intentional defaulters, but not yet active, induced the recipients to believe that, regardless of the validity of their debt position, potentially even uncertain and/or disputed, it was preferable to quickly arrange for the payment of the requested amount, in order to avoid registration in the database, with the possible consequence of no longer being able to conclude contracts with any telephone operator.
During the investigation, inspections were carried out with the help of the special Antitrust Unit of the Guardia di Finanza.
