Aggressive telemarketing, stop the amendment to the Fiscal Decree. Will be majority odg

Extending the 'new' ban on aggressive telemarketing also to telecommunications companies, in addition to energy and gas companies. Adding, however, that if a customer gives consent to receive "commercial proposals concerning the supply of goods, products or services offered" then he also gives "permission" to operators to contact him. No dice. The reworded amendment to the tax decree on telemarketing was turned into a majority agenda to the tax decree. 'The necessary unanimity was not found,' Antonella Zedda (FdI), the rapporteur in the Senate Finance Committee, explained to Ansa. We will re-propose the issue in the first useful measure'.

The amendment proposes to extend also to telecommunications the constraints that, with the billing decree, were applied to telemarketing only for the electricity and gas sector. 'In order to strengthen the protection of domestic end-customers and their right to choose economic conditions,' reads the Consumer Code, i.e. Legislative Decree no. 206 of 6 September 2005, 'it is forbidden to make commercial solicitations by telephone, also by sending messages to consumers, aimed at the proposal or conclusion of contracts for the supply of electricity and gas'. To the latter, the text of the amendment states, would be added 'telecommunications services'.

The second sentence clarifies the cases in which the customer may be contacted. The operator may do so, also by means of messages, 'if there has been a request made directly to the trader' or 'in the event that the contact has been made with regard to its customers who have expressed specific consent to receive commercial proposals relative to the supply of goods, products or services offered'.

A proposal welcomed 'favourably' by Asstel. For the president of the trade association, Pietro Labriola, 'this is an important consumer protection measure, which strengthens market transparency and helps to counter aggressive and unfair commercial practices, increasing users' trust in operators and authorised sales channels. The intervention also corrects an obvious regulatory asymmetry between sectors that are now increasingly integrated. Today, in fact, energy and telecommunications frequently operate through converging offers and the same commercial channels, but are subject to different rules'.

"The extension of the ban," he added, "will make it possible to limit the use of aggressive and unsolicited teleselling, favouring a more balanced market with uniform rules and greater transparency, to the benefit of both consumers and competition between operators.