The Antitrust has fined, for an amount of 1 million and 640.000 euros Agos Ducato for deceptive and aggressive commercial practices. The practices in violation of the Consumer Code, in the opinion of the Competition and Market Guarantor Authority, are three and related to financing relationships with consumers.
In particular, the before purchasing, it concerns the deceptive and omissive information disseminated by Agos, above all by sending personalized letters to financed customers, bearing confidential proposals, in which new liquidity is promised at improved economic conditions and clearly lower than those originally subscribed by the consumer. The Antitrust has ascertained the untruthfulness of the offers since in the vast majority of cases the customers have received, once they went to the company, offers with rates and installments even much higher than those proposed. Furthermore, in 75% of cases, customers saw the economic conditions worsen and rates increased by an average of over 20%.
La second practice concerns the conduct of Agos aimed at creating obstacles to the early repayment of the personal loan of various customers, through, for example, complex procedures and based on requests for documentation not easily available from the customer or based on the prior verification of certain conditions before providing its count. Further obstacles were put in place in cases of revolving credit lines.
Finally, the Authority ascertained a third practice, consisting of insistent reminders for payment of overdue installments, with methods deemed aggressive by the Agcm as they are based on numerous telephone contacts (phone collection), digitally (sms), letter reminders (telegrams), moreover also addressed to third parties ( such as guarantors, employer, family members) and with pressure due to close attendance.
The case had been reported to the Antitrust by numerous consumers and by six consumer associations, Altroconsumo, Codes, Federconsumatori, the National Consumer Union, the Consumer Protection Union, as well as the Citizen Defense Movement.
