Audiotel, abuse of weakness and consumer law

We remind you that clairvoyance practiced by certain audiotel services is a real fool’s market. It is a flourishing business which brings in big profits for specialized companies, by employing dubious practitioners with uncertain skills, when they are not professional usurpers-manipulators recycled into an activity left to its own devices, and this playing on the ignorance, lack of knowledge and distress of a large number of their peers. Consumers are regularly relieved of their savings and even threatened with prosecution to prevent them from rebuffing or contesting one or more illusory clairvoyance consultations imposed. These practitioners and these firms cannot afford to rob consumers who are quite fragile or in great psychological distress with impunity; the responsibility and the very image of the entire profession are at stake.

Many consumers who call on the INAD find themselves victims of abuse of weakness and consumer law.

Any consumer who is a victim of the fraudulent actions of certain audiotel firms or unscrupulous practitioners should not hesitate to file a complaint with the Public Prosecutor of the competent jurisdiction. Indeed, article L123-8 of the Consumer Code and article 225-15-2 of the Penal Code allow you to assert your rights.

ABUSE OF WEAKNESS AND CONSUMER RIGHTS The “abuse of weakness or ignorance” is punishable by the Consumer Code, under the terms of article L 123-8 of the Consumer Code, which tends to repress consent imposed in sales methods where vulnerable people are particularly sensitive to abusive commercial pressure….  These are door-to-door sales, canvassing by telephone or fax. The same applies when a personalized request has been made without this request necessarily being nominative, to go to a place of sale, carried out at home and accompanied by the offer of special advantages, meetings or excursions organized by the author of the offense or for his benefit. Also covered are commitments obtained when the transaction was made in places not intended for the marketing of the good or service offered or in the context of fairs or exhibitions; or  when the transaction was concluded in an emergency situation which made it impossible for the victim of the offense to consult one or more qualified professionals, third parties or contracts.   ABUSE OF WEAKNESS
Article 225-15-2 of the Penal Code in the event of fraudulent abuse of the state of ignorance or the situation of weakness either of a minor, or of a person whose particular vulnerability, due to their age, an illness, an infirmity, a physical or psychological deficiency or a state of pregnancy, is apparent and known to its author, or of a person in a state of psychological or physical subjection resulting from the exercise of serious pressure or repeated or techniques capable of altering his judgment, to lead this minor or this person to an act or an abstention which is seriously harmful to him….    When the offense is committed by the de facto or legal leader of a group who pursues activities having the aim or effect of creating, maintaining or exploiting the psychological or physical subjection of the people who participate in these activities, the penalties are increased to five years’ imprisonment and 800,000 euros.