This Thursday, Congress passed the Customer Service Act, which includes measures such as requiring companies to have their customer service respond within three minutes – and not just answering machines -, preventing fake reviews on the Internet or banning influencers advertise bets. Known as the SAC law and promoted by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, the initiative regulates various practices that it considers harmful to customers, from telephone calls spam, to the automatic renewal of service subscriptions streamingwithout forgetting the long periods of claims resolution. The law was approved with 179 votes in favour, 33 against and 138 abstentions. Below are some of the new features that the legislation will introduce.
Faster phone service
The main innovations of the text fall on customer service services, where consumers call to receive information, submit complaints or request some after-sales service. When it comes into force, companies will be required to limit telephone waiting times to three minutes for at least 95% of calls, reduce the query resolution period to 15 days and prohibit the exclusive use of answering machines or robot to respond to complaints and questions. The rule establishes that, when the consumer asks to speak to a person, the company guarantees it. Also, you won’t be able to hang up a call because the waiting time is long. THE call center Companies with more than 250 employees and more than 50 million euros in turnover will be obliged to answer questions in the co-official languages (Catalan, Galician and Basque).
Block “spam” calls.
One of the highlights is the action against phone calls from spam. Companies will have to identify their commercial calls with a prefix and telephone operators will have to block those that do not use that prefix and declare all contracts stipulated for non-consensual calls null and void. The law bans these intrusive calls as early as 2023, but companies continue to contact people with various excuses, such as that the user has given consent by accepting cookies on a website, who is a former customer or who has not asked to have their data deleted from the records.
Last May the Ministry for Digital Transformation launched an initiative to reduce these calls, thanks to which it claims to have avoided 48 million of them in the first four months, but the main consumer organizations believe that it does not work: both OCU and Facua have carried out surveys in which they have shown that there are more and more of them spam telephone.
Ban fake reviews
The initiative will seek to ban fake reviews on the Internet. Those spaces where consumers enjoy bars, restaurants and hotels are useful for choosing where to go, but can contain misleading information. Many businesses, especially restaurants, complain of receiving fake comments that hurt theirs classification and the perception of consumers who use them to decide which venue to go to. Consumption’s proposed legal change will allow business owners to request the withdrawal of a review when they can demonstrate that the person who wrote it did not use the service or that the comment is false. It also aims to prohibit the trading of comments, obliging it to indicate whether it has been verified that the review was written by a real consumer and that it was written within 30 days of the purchase or visit.
Evidence may be provided to demonstrate that an invoice shown in the review has been manipulated; demonstrate that the prices indicated are not real; show customer lists that demonstrate that the person who posted the review did not use the service. Comments on websites such as TripAdvisor, TheFork or Booking or Amazon can be decisive in choosing one product or service over another. For this reason Consumo claims to try to regulate them to guarantee their truthfulness and not that they damage tourism and hospitality.
Clearer management costs
The new regulation also obliges companies to include management costs in the final price of tickets and services. Those that often appear on concert tickets at the last minute, when the purchase has already been decided and payment is about to be made. The text requires that the complete final price, including taxes, be always indicated, subdividing, where applicable, the amount of increases or discounts applied to the offer and additional costs, including any management costs, which are charged to the consumer or user.
According to the law, processing fees cannot be greater than the additional costs incurred by the consumer for purchasing tickets in person for the same events or shows. Nor may we charge an additional fee for correcting spelling or typographical errors in your name in contracts. online. Likewise, it is prohibited to charge additional costs for printing the ticket, or for receiving and storing it on your mobile phone.
Digital subscription renewal notices
Automatic renewal of security service subscriptions is prohibited. streaminglike Amazon, Spotify or Netflix. Companies must inform the user 15 days before the expiry of the term so that he has the possibility to choose not to renew the service and inform him of the expiration of this term and of the consequences of not confirming the cancellation of the renewal. Currently, this notice is often not sent and systematic renewals of unsolicited services occur.
This measure is designed to prevent subscriptions or subscriptions from being extended to applications to which the consumer has even forgotten to subscribe. Therefore, in fixed-term but renewable contracts, customer services must give sufficient notice for customers to cancel if they wish.
“Influencers” will not be able to announce bets
The rule also includes new restrictions on gambling advertising, which the Supreme Court struck down in April last year because it had not been passed into law. Since then, famous people or influencers advertise bets and give welcome bonuses to new customers. The SAC law once again prohibits both aspects. Meanwhile, the other restrictions established by the decree remain, such as the veto on advertising by betting houses during sports broadcasts, the ban on these brands from sponsoring sport and the limitation of advertising on television, radio and YouTube in the time slot from 00:00 to 05:00 in the morning.
