If you’ve been following the news over the past few weeks, you’ll have read that commercial calls that don’t have the express consent of the person receiving them are finally illegal. However, I already predict not. What they won’t stop, you won’t receive them less frequently, and you won’t be able to report them either.
Multinational companies tend to have very good legal departments. They know they have to be prepared for any legal challenge, as is the case with this ban. What would a phone company be without your nap calls? They don’t intend to quit, and they don’t have to..
Beware of telephone contracts
Let’s start by talking about express consent. This clause indicates that if the subject agrees to receive a commercial call, it is perfectly valid. In other words, if you go to the website of one of these companies and fill out the typical “call me yourself” form, they can do it. It’s logic. But that’s not the only way to give consent. Also, if you have a mobile phone contract, you have most likely consented to several sales callsAnd you didn’t even realize it.
When you sign what is called in my field a contract for landline telephony, mobile telephony and Internet access communication services, it is likely to include a clause in which you authorize both the company provider and the rest of the companies that make up your group to contact you with commercial offers.
In other words, if you sign a contract with Movistar, it is likely that you have authorized companies such as O2 and others belonging to Telefónica to call you. Can you do something for this? No. Because you have given your “express consent”. This clause something better could have been written to avoid something like this. In any case, it does not matter whether you have consented to it or not. They will call you the same. It has to do with the scope of the law.
The key is outside the European Union
As is logical, a law in USA can, at most, be applicable throughout the national territory, but compliance with it cannot be imposed in Colombia, for example, where we are. Not bad call center that companies here end up subcontracting be able to override this prohibition. I explain how the operation works.
When a Spanish company uses the services of a call center located in any country outside the European Union —which provides for fines of up to two million dollars—, can generate a situation that exempts you from complying with the rule in USA, since it does not they’re not the ones making the calls, nor the person making them here. The Spanish company can only be required to ensure that the call center meet the standard. And it does. As? sign a contract.
Suppose I have a mobile phone company in USA. I just learned about the prohibition of unauthorized commercial calls, and I want to be able to continue making them because They make up a good percentage of my company’s total revenue every year. What I will do is contact a company, for example in Colombia, which offers a service of call center.
Fraud of the law is the order of the day
To cover my back, I will sign a contract with said company in your country and not in USA, which includes a clause stating that they can only telephone people who have expressly consented to it. And here’s the catch: at the same time I will tell the company, without leaving it in writing, to call whoever they want. Whether you consented or not.
So when someone files a complaint in USA for receiving unauthorized commercial calls, I will allege that it is a clear breach of contract that I signed in Colombia with the Colombian company.
I can bring the judge a copy of my contract which clearly states that the call center He was only allowed to call people who had consented to the call. The judge can’t do anything. First because I complied with what was legally required of meand second, because the service contract with the call center is signed in Colombia, which is outside its jurisdiction.
When I get a few lawsuits and justice begins to suspect what I’m doing, I’ll break the contract with this company and sign with another of the thousands that exist. This way I can pretend that I tried to fix it but had bad luck. And if at some point, although it is highly unlikely, I received a fine, I would pay it without any problem, because With the whole operation, he would have made a lot more money than it would have cost to deal with it.. Here, everyone is a winner. Except you, of course.
As you can see, spam calls have not and will not end. You will continue to receive them with the same frequency as before, although it is possible that this new law reject another companyFor. Either way, there are always spam filters you can install on your iPhone that do a good job.
In Applesphere | Receiving commercial calls after this time is illegal: we can report or block them on the iPhone to avoid them altogether
In Applesphere | The end of spam is near with the Hide My Mail service in iCloud+
