Clamp down on aggresive Tele-sales practices

Further to an initial debate in May of this year, a meeting of the lower chamber of the Spanish parliament yesterday unanimously approved new regulations to outlaw telephone spam and similar unprofessional sales tactics by increasing levels protection to consumers and stricter regulation over unlawful or misleading advertising. practices

This approval covers two European directives on the subject, aswell as introducing changes to four existing Spanish laws: These being the law on consumer protection, unfair competition, advertising and on legislation covering retail trade.

Such aggressive sales practices are described as those which use bullying tactics, duress, force or undue influence to seriously limit the consumer’s freedom of choice. Unfair competition was defined as leading a consumer into making an on the spot decision with the pretext that an item or service is available for a limited time only when that is proved not to be the case. Similarly, presenting information unclearly or ambiguously, and misrepresenting the goods or service offered as comparable with another are practices that will be included. Hiding information which would be key to the consumer’s decision is another.