"Hello, are you interested in changing your gas supplier?".
How many times in the middle of an important meeting, during a dinner or while driving, do you receive a phone call on your mobile phone and, upon answering, you feel offered by operators and call centers telephone contracts or discounts on electricity and gas bills?
A phenomenon called "
wild telemarketing
" that for years has been tormenting citizens who are victims of unwanted commercial phone calls, and destined - at least on paper - to disappear on July 27th, the date by which the public Register of Oppositions is scheduled to be activated.
A farewell that, however, risks not being definitive, "due to the presence of operators who act illegally and in the underground or from foreign offices", as underlined by the president of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the protection of consumers and users, Simone Baldelli.
The Registry, in essence,
could turn out to be a flop
, as the new provisions do not apply to call centers located abroad, and due to the presence of illegal operators capable of circumventing the rules.
And that telemarketing is a business that is coveted by many, the numbers confirm: according to Codacons estimates, the sector generates a
turnover of 4 billion euros
per year in Italy, with the telephone sale of goods and services that produces a volume, for the entire supply chain, estimated at 40 billion euros.
1,400 are the call center companies in "outsourcing" active in our country, for an annual turnover of 2.8 billion euros.
Considering also the internal call centers of companies, telemarketing registers about 120,000 employees in Italy.
Returning to the public Register of Oppositions, from 27 July users will have
4 registration methods
available to no longer receive commercial phone calls or to carry out market research (also generated by automatic systems) on their fixed and mobile numbers: web, number green, email and registered letter.
The telemarketing operator who uses the data in the public telephone directories is required to check the lists of potential contacts with the RPO, through a series of services available on the register's site.
The penalties for abuses and violations are very heavy: operators risk
fines of up to 20 million euros
, and for companies there are penalties of up to 4% of the total annual turnover.
"We will see the effectiveness of the public register of oppositions on the ground in the coming months, to the proof of the facts, also due to the presence of operators who act illegally and in the underground or from foreign offices, which makes it necessary to clearly define the chain of responsibility within the various supply chains ", Baldelli affirms, supporting the Dutch model on the subject" based on the assumption that no one can receive commercial telephone calls, except those who have made explicit their consent ".