How do you get rid of phone advertising?
How do you get rid of phone advertising?
My phone hasn't stopped ringing lately and I'm fed up with being constantly disturbed by calls from call centres trying to sell me anything and everything! I thought it was forbidden in Switzerland to canvass by phone, at least for people who have the little star in the phone book, right? What can I do to put a stop to this?
D., Geneva
Telephone canvassing for the purpose of selling goods or services is not in itself prohibited in Switzerland.
As you mentioned, it is possible to add an asterisk (*) to your telephone number in the directory, or not to include it at all. In both these cases, telephone canvassing is prohibited in principle, pursuant to Article 3 of the Federal Act against Unfair Competition (UWG).
There are, however, a few exceptions: companies of which you are already a customer are authorised to call you for promotional purposes. You may also have authorised this type of call by filling in a form with your details as part of a competition, for example.
That said, it is well known that some companies trade with lists of telephone numbers, others canvass customers using machines that dial numbers at random, and still others pay no attention to any restrictions in the telephone directory: in reality, therefore, there is no guarantee that you will never be disturbed.
If this nevertheless happens to you, you can demand that your name be removed from the list of the company contacting you. If you receive calls despite the asterisk in the telephone directory, you can also lodge a complaint about unfair competition with the police, or report the case to the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), which has a dedicated page for this type of action.
SECO regularly gathers complaints and refers cases to the relevant public prosecutors, who may initiate criminal proceedings. These may result in sentences ranging from a simple fine to 3 years' imprisonment in the most serious cases.
At the end of last year, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court examined the case of a director of the board of a telemarketing company whose employees regularly ignored consumers' wishes not to be bothered by solicitations. The federal judges upheld the director's conviction for violating the UCA, rejecting in particular the argument by which he had tried to justify his employees' actions on the grounds that some of the people contacted were (very) long-standing former customers...
