One of its missions is to protect consumers. To achieve this, the General Directorate for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) once again carried out checks in 2019. Thus, with nearly 100,000 establishments and 15,000 websites checked, some 22 million euros in fines for non-compliance with payment deadlines, more than 55,000 consumer complaints: the DGCCRF in 2019 targeted "everyday fraudsters".
"Control needs to support the ecological transition"
"Two particular themes" stand out, explains in the preamble of the annual report published Monday the Director General of the DGCCRF, Virginie Beaumeunier: "the growing importance of control needs to support the ecological transition and the fight against everyday fraud". The crooks are according to her particularly inventive: hidden subscription subscription, abuse of weakness in home repair, fake administrative sites and especially abusive canvassing, that "92% of the French find too frequent".
The administration, which comes under the Ministry of the Economy, therefore targeted the ordering parties, tripled the amount of fines and developed the "name and shame". The energy renovation of housing has been the subject of special attention by its 3,000 agents because "the development of insulation offers at 1 euro has unfortunately been accompanied by fraud, based on massive and aggressive telephone canvassing campaigns" , explains the director. In October 2019, the French Engie was thus fined 892,500 euros for abusive canvassing.
Amazon and SFR condemned
In addition, 2019 was marked by the development of controls linked to the implementation of the EGAlim law (or “Food law”), but also by the condemnation in September of the online commerce giant Amazon, by the Paris Commercial Court, to modify several clauses of the general conditions of use of its “marketplace” within six months and to pay a fine of 4 million euros for its commercial practices. Another sizeable sanction: that of the telephone operator SFR to the tune of 3.7 million euros, in November 2019, for repeated breaches of legal payment deadlines.
In total, the DGCCRF recorded, in 2019, 55,912 consumer complaints (-13% over one year), a decrease which is "in line with the trend observed for ten years" according to its report. Finally, recalled Virginie Beaumeunier, the “Signal Conso” application, tested in three regions in 2019 and allowing consumers to alert the DGCCRF to a malfunction he would have witnessed, was generalized in early 2020.
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- Protection
- Fraud
- Consumers
- Consumption
- Dgccrf
- Economy