Paris (AFP)

Several consumer defense associations announced Monday the launch of a petition calling on the public authorities to ban door-to-door sales, a practice qualified as "intrusive" and "unwanted by consumers".

"The resurgence of telephone canvassing (...) requires firm action from the public authorities to put an end to toxic practices", denounce in a joint press release ADEIC, AFOC, ALLDC, CSF, CNAFAL, the CLCV, Rural Families, UFC-Que Choisir and UNAF.

This initiative comes at a time when the National Assembly is preparing to discuss on January 30, at second reading, a bill on this issue. "However, as it stands, the text suffers cruelly from ambition and even risks worsening the situation, hence our call for the mobilization of consumers, the first victims of real commercial harassment", alarm the associations .

"The sectors which resort most to canvassing are those which concentrate consumer disputes with amounts which can be very significant", denounce these associations, which aim to reach 50,000 signatures for the petition.

In France, at present, everyone can be solicited, unless they have entered their number in the Bloctel file, a service set up in mid-2016 which theoretically makes it possible to no longer be disturbed by unwanted calls. Some 3.7 million consumers and 700 companies had subscribed to the Bloctel device in 2018.

Telephone canvassing was however "not limited by Bloctel. Four years after its implementation, the device is ineffective due to far too extensive exemptions and insufficiently dissuasive sanctions", continue the associations.

Regarding the text to be discussed soon in the Assembly, it "endorses the logic of the right of opposition (opt-out) of Bloctel, whose ineffectiveness is notoriously noted by consumers", underline the associations.

The "opt-out" is when the recipient of an advertisement has not objected: if he did not say "no", it is "yes", recalls on his website the National Commission for Data Protection (Cnil).

But in addition, the text "widens the possibilities of derogation from the prohibition of telephone canvassing for people registered on Bloctel", still tan associations.

Indeed, according to them, "all the companies with which the consumer registered with Bloctel has, or had, a contractual relation could canvass him: + contract one day, canvassed always +!", Protested the associations which call the parliamentarians to "outright ban this practice".

© 2020 AFP