With the successive confinements, the French have changed their consumption habits, with an ever greater proportion of online purchases and with them, the increase in disputes, signaling the SignalConso application, which has been used for a year to prevent, via its cell phone abuse in the Suppression of fraud, announced the government on Friday.
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Until then, it was only possible to reach the General Directorate for Competition, Consumption and Fraud Control (DGCCRF), by mail, telephone or e-mail.
Experienced in three regions in 2019 and generalized in February 2020, SignalConso had recorded at the end of January 25,000 consumer reports relating to purchases on the internet since October when this option was activated, specifies a press release from the Ministry of the Economy. .
In four months, this represents almost half of the 60,000 automated reports made during the first year of operation of the application, which concern a wide variety of sectors (telephony, travel, banks, etc.), to the DGCCRF.
In December, 70% of the reports were linked to e-commerce and related to the delivery or quality of products, the cancellation of a plane ticket purchased online, the inability to unsubscribe or even the no -respect of the withdrawal period.
Grievances followed over telephony, banks, insurance and mutual funds, and water, gas and electricity networks.
80% of companies notified "provide an answer"
Some 5,000 reports related to grievances linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, in particular during the spring 2020 containment, and were linked to "the regulation of prices or the quality of certain hydroalcoholic gels and masks, of scams to miracle cures when shopping online or in physical stores ”.
According to the DGCCRF, six out of ten companies (61%) that have been the subject of a report activate their account on the application and 80% of these "provide a response".
SignalConso informs consumers of the possibility of being reimbursed for their online purchases made with a bank card, in particular in the event of a product delivery failure, and of the possibility of entering a consumer mediator in France - or at the abroad for purchases made in Europe.
Read also: Payment terms: 30% of companies often out of the blue, according to the DGCCRF
In 2021, new options are planned, such as the possibility of reporting, in the event of abusive telephone canvassing for example, a company whose name the consumer does not know, by simply indicating the company's telephone number.
In addition to SignalConso, the state allows citizens to report various problems on different platforms, such as online harassment or elder abuse.