MILANO – “Misleading and aggressive unfair commercial practices “. With these reasons, theAntitrust imposed a total fine of 7 million euros on two companies of the Facile.it group – Facile.it Mediation Creditizia SpA and Facile.it Broker di Assicurazioni SpA The fine came at the conclusion of the preliminary investigation conducted by the Authority in relation to ” two unfair commercial practices regarding comparisons and estimates in the financial and insurance sectors – informs a note – carried out through the Facile.it website. .000 euro to Facile.it Insurance Broker SpA “.
The Antitrust specifies that “the first practice, of a deceptive nature, in violation of articles 21 and 22 of the Consumer Code, relates to the fact that it was not clarified that the results of the loan comparison are provisional, as it is delegated to individuals lenders any assessment of the creditworthiness of the individual user, with possible worsening of the economic conditions proposed in the estimate phase. This is fundamental information concerning the actual contractual conditions, therefore capable of affecting the consumer’s choice. Motor TPL policies, on the other hand, it was not adequately highlighted that Prima Assicurazioni SpA is a brokerage company, and not an insurance company, and that it offers policies with indirect compensation “.
Furthermore, the second practice, “of an aggressive nature, in violation of articles 24 and 25 of the Consumer Code, consists in having insistently offered the consumer, through the use of automatic pop-ups, an insurance policy combined with personal loans. also to subjects who at first expressed their desire not to stipulate the policy itself “, observes the Authority, and” both for loans and for Motor TPL policies, a real solicitation activity is carried out by contacting by telephone also those who had not expressly asked to be recalled, limiting themselves to saving the estimate “.
According to the Authority, “this conduct is likely to limit the consumer’s freedom of choice, as the unsolicited solicitation of a saved estimate, for which the interest may have ceased over time, constitutes a form of undue pressure , able to condition their choices “.
For its part, the company has made it known: “We do not share in any way the assessments of the authority, which in our opinion has not been able to grasp the fundamental role that online comparators, such as Facile.it, perform on the market to stimulate competition that benefits consumers. The mission of Facile.it is to offer a punctual and transparent service that can allow the end user to reduce family expenses, even to a significant extent, as confirmed by the fact that hundreds of users use our services every day. We will appeal to the Lazio TAR to request the cancellation of the provision “.
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