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The number of people harassed by telemarketers continues to rise, with an average of 26 complaints per day. N-VA therefore wants telesellers to only be allowed to call people who have given their explicit permission to do so.
If your telephone number is currently on the Do Not Call list, you are in principle no longer allowed to receive calls from companies that try to recruit customers by telephone. And this is on penalty of fines of up to 60,000 euros.
The famous list now contains more than 1.5 million Belgian telephone numbers, both from private individuals and from companies that do not want telemarketers on the line. Yet that still happens. According to figures that N-VA MP Anneleen Van Bossuyt requested from State Secretary for Consumer Protection Alexia Bertrand (MR), the FPS Economy received an average of 26 complaints every day last year. This concerns almost 10,000 complaints annually, the highest number ever.
Difficult controls
Remarkable: according to both Bertrand and the FPS Economy, it is not always easy for the inspection services to take strict action against telemarketers who do not respect the Do Not Call Me list. Why? Because of the “multitude of diverse intermediaries” used by some call centers, Bertrand said. But also because some of these telemarketing companies operate from outside Europe.
“Choose a so-called opt-in system, instead of an opt-out, like today. This means that you can only receive promotional telephone calls if you have explicitly indicated that you want to receive these telephone calls.”
Anneleen Van Bossuyt
N-VA Member of Parliament
And finally, because a number of telesellers “make it very difficult to identify the companies involved” through number shielding or spoofing – the false use of a telephone number.
Only with permission
According to N-VA MP Anneleen Van Bossuyt, things are going from bad to worse, and the government must therefore urgently change their focus: “Choose a so-called opt-in system, instead of an opt-out, like today. This means that you can only receive promotional telephone calls if you have explicitly indicated that you want to receive these telephone calls. Today, this arrangement already exists in the Netherlands and Germany.”