A situation often occurs when, when purchasing one product, the seller persistently offers to purchase another. Especially insurance companies - some agents go so far as to not sell a compulsory motor liability insurance policy without life insurance. Another option is to purchase insurance when applying for a loan: without it, the rate is 0.5-1% higher.
All of the above and many other cases are imposition of a service. The Consumer Protection Act specifically prohibits conditioning one purchase on another. The ban is given in Part 2 of Art. 16 ZZPP RF.
What it is?
The imposition of services refers to an attempt by a dishonest seller to force a consumer to purchase a particular product using various tricks. As a result, the buyer incurs unnecessary costs. Such actions on the part of the seller are illegal.
Reference. An example of a typical imposition of a service is the inability to purchase a product without purchasing related products. Thus, the consumer's right to freedom of choice is violated.
The most common options for imposed services:
- imposing insurance when drawing up a loan agreement;
- imposition of additional medical studies and related medications;
- imposition of mobile communication and Internet services;
- inclusion of extra clauses in housing and communal services contracts;
- provision of notary services;
- advertising spam calls and SMS mailings;
- imposing services under the guise of promotions;
- imposing an intermediary service for processing large purchases.
When there is no violation
Article 16 of the Consumer Protection Law imposes strict restrictions on sellers. However, there are difficult situations when there are no violations. For example, there is no offense in the actions of the seller when he offers the buyer to purchase a product that integrates several goods or services that cannot be separated from each other.
An example is a furniture set: the manufacturer created and sold it to the store, the seller sells it in the form in which he purchased it - there is no violation.
Another example is combining several similar items by packaging. In this case, the packaging is intended for use by the buyer, and not for the purposes of transportation or storage in a warehouse. This situation should be distinguished from small wholesale, when the seller actually forces the buyer to purchase a lot of goods.
Refusal from an imposed paid service
If an undesirable, imposed service is detected, the buyer has the right to refuse it. To do this, you must personally contact the head of the organization with a request to cancel the service and refund the money, or draw up a written appeal addressed to the administrator in two copies with a detailed description of the complaint and how to solve the problem.
If your complaint is ignored, you must contact the following authorities for help:
- Rospotrebnadzor. You can submit the document either in person or online on the official website. It is advisable to provide documents proving the violation (photos, video and audio materials, witness statements, copies of receipts, etc.). After considering the complaint, employees of this service are required to conduct an investigation into the fact of violation of consumer rights.
- The Federal Antimonopoly Committee reviews complaints in cases of financial violations.
- Prosecutor's office. If contacted, carries out an unscheduled inspection of the organization.
- Court. This is where you should contact in case of serious losses or violations on the part of the organization.
When filing a claim, you must indicate the following:
- surname, name, patronymic of the applicant;
- name of the authority where the victim applies;
- details and name of the organization;
- a detailed statement of the essence of the claim with reference to applicable laws;
- applicant's requirements;
- information about the availability of evidence;
- date and signature.
More information about the grounds for collecting money and how to return money for a service can be found here.
We do not recommend completing the documents yourself. Save time - contact our lawyers by phone:
+7 (499) 938-90-37 Moscow+7 (812) 467-37-23 St. Petersburg
Poor quality provision of services is their improper performance: delay, non-compliance with GOST, etc. And if the service provided does not meet the safety requirements of the law, then the performer is liable in accordance with the administrative and criminal legislation of the Russian Federation.
Imposing services over the phone: how to deal with it and how not to fall for scammers?
Russians are increasingly faced with so-called “cold calls” from complete strangers. What lengths do sellers of goods and services go to in order to attract the attention of buyers!
Various offers: from theater tickets to cosmetic procedures, medical examinations. All this is united by two simple words - imposition of services. And besides irritation, people have a question: how did their number end up on the call lists?
All these annoying calls are illegal. Telephone advertising is legal only if you ordered it yourself - say, to find out when New Year's discounts are at your favorite store. And God knows who calls to buy tickets for some concert or invest somewhere - this is the business on our nerves.
The Internet is bursting with offers from so-called black call centers - they promise entrepreneurs that after a phone call, new clients will pour in in droves. We will introduce ourselves as a company that is promoting, say, a new face cream on the market. At the head of this anthill of a thousand operators is administrator Zhanna. For 20 thousand rubles a month, he promises to annoy you with this cream, break the law 50 times a day, and at the same time, medical confidentiality.
“This is all a violation. What should each subscriber do in this case? Take a screenshot of this SMS, attach it to your application and send it. If it’s a phone call, you need to record it,” advises the head of the Moscow OFAS Armen Khanyan.
Fines amount to hundreds of thousands of rubles. Lawyer Roman Yushin is one of the few who send uninvited advertisers not to hell, but to the Federal Antimonopoly Service.
“As soon as the control authorities pay attention to them, they begin to ask them questions, quickly stop their activities, hastily register a new legal entity and, under a new guise, engage in the same activities,” he says.
Be prepared: they know how to get out of things well here. But even the leading callers have only one or two purchases per hundred irritated callers.
“In such call centers, employees burn out very quickly, and staff turnover is very high. They are not officially registered. Most often, these people are visitors who need at least some kind of work,” said the head of the training center, telemarketer Galina Khaustova.
Where do black call centers get their client bases? On the Internet, journalists found dozens of sites freely selling the personal data of Russians. The law punishes this by two years in prison. On average, your name, phone number and address cost five cents. The data of all the documents that you think you are storing securely is already three rubles. The seller sent us samples of customer databases. For example, there are hundreds of contacts of general directors in Moscow - for the sale of luxury goods, there are databases of parents or “60+” - usually they try to sell medicines on these phones.
Journalists tried to find the sender’s office at the address listed on the website and ended up in a garage cooperative. It turns out that a certain Slavik, who lives in Ukraine, is selling numbers left and right. On a large scale and with impunity. The film crew was unable to find a single case where such sellers received a real sentence.
They sell them in bulk and in the antediluvian way - on disks, from under the counter. A seller at the radio market promises a fresh, stolen database of car owners. For ten thousand rubles - this is no joke! — 40 million contacts.
But they could have been stopped immediately - at the first complaint about illegal advertising. Coincidentally, while filming this story, the correspondent also received a call. Usually such subscribers are marked with red letters, this does not mean that the problem with telephone advertising has been completely solved, but they will not call for some time.
What services are considered imposed
First, you need to determine what exactly can be considered imposed services, since they can be very different. Their list includes:
- Services that are mandatory in order to conclude the main contract, and the cancellation of which will not allow the transaction to be completed;
- Services connected or provided without the client’s consent on a paid basis and not specified in the main contract itself;
- Services that were included in the contract only at the initiative of one of the parties without the consent of the client;
- Services imposed on the client in a fraudulent manner.
Info
Imposed services appear quite often in various contracts, especially if these are contracts valid for a certain period. At the same time, ordinary citizens most often encounter them when working with banks (payment of additional fees for calls, card servicing, etc.) and mobile operators (additional alerts, paid subscriptions, roaming services, etc.). This raises the question, “Are extra services even legal?”
Documentation of a paid service can be expressed as:
— the patient’s written refusal to provide medical services using Russian or foreign-made products,
— or a properly executed contract for the provision of paid medical services.
When concluding an agreement with a medical organization, you must always remember that when concluding such an agreement, the medical institution is obliged to provide the patient with information about the possibility of receiving the appropriate types and volumes of medical care free of charge.
To protect yourself from the imposition of paid medical services, you need to know your legal rights and obligations. However, no one can completely insure themselves against the imposition of paid medical services.
How to easily get rid of those who like to call and impose services over the phone
One of the most annoying methods of advertising is calls. And it’s okay if these are calls from a “hot” database (that is, if they call a company whose product/service you were recently interested in, and most likely you left them a number). But there is also “cold” calling - when an employee of a company simply calls everyone, even if the person was not interested in such a service.
In this way they usually offer to get a loan or apply for a bank card. Less common, but there are other proposals - from window repair to drawing up a personal horoscope.
How do they even know your number?
They can either be collected in the public domain (social networks) or purchased from employees of organizations to which people provide their numbers (for example: communication shops, online stores).
These numbers are then collected into databases, where they can even be sorted by age and gender. Well, these databases are already being bought by those who want to advertise in this way. This list of numbers is given to an employee who will call everyone.
Is this legal?
If an employee of a company to whom you left your number calls you, it’s possible that yes, it’s legal. But only if you signed a paper (or checked a box on the site) that you agree with the processing of your personal data. Often this is done automatically - that is, the person does not even read the entire contract, or does not read what box he checks on the site.
In all other cases, this is illegal under Federal Law No. 152 “On Personal Data” .
How to get rid of it?
The main thing you need to understand is that it is pointless to break down and yell at the caller. This is a hired employee who was simply given the task of calling a list of numbers and saying the same text.
If they call you infrequently, and it doesn’t bother you, you can simply politely refuse the first time. If the calls are repeated with the same offer, or if from the very first call the interlocutor pushes, persuades, imposes himself, you can joke (for example, ask for a long time and tediously for details about the product/service, or say that you will now get to work at the prosecutor’s office, and read the proposal more carefully), or not particularly restrain your expressions. After all, it’s already clear that your polite answer was ignored, or they didn’t bother to remove your phone number from the database after the first refusal.
But the most effective option is to threaten with the law . Ask where the caller got your number and tell him that you will contact the Federal Antimonopoly Communications Office. Most likely, after this the interlocutor will politely end the conversation without even finishing his proposal. And it’s not surprising - after all, legal entities can be fined up to 0.5 million rubles for such calls. So, at a minimum, this company will definitely not call you again.
On topic: After these phrases on the phone, it’s better to hang up immediately
What might it look like to impose additional dental services?
– One of the common complaints to Rospotrebnadzor is the imposition of unnecessary expensive services. Some people find it inconvenient to refuse additional services from a dentist, while others do not even suspect that the services offered to them are not at all necessary.
What schemes are often used by unscrupulous doctors?
Scheme No. 1
Patients are offered a free preventive examination, during which clients, even those without dental problems, receive a whole set of prescriptions for a considerable amount. To avoid this situation, patients may be advised to consult one or two more specialists to make sure that the services offered to them are really necessary.
Please note that usually unscrupulous specialists like to exaggerate and point out dire prospects in the absence of an immediate solution. After all, if the client does not order the service immediately, he will most likely not return, since he will have time to rationally consider the feasibility of the intervention and consult with other specialists.
Thus, one of the patients at the dental clinic shared her sad experience. When contacting one of the paid clinics, the doctor at the reception stated the need for emergency medical intervention and suggested expensive braces made from unique materials. The cost of the service exceeded 80 thousand rubles. When the patient turned to another doctor, he assured her that braces were not necessary.
Scheme No. 2
Providing paid services that are required under Compulsory Health Insurance (CHI). A separate group of violations occurs when patients go to a municipal clinic to receive dental care under the compulsory medical insurance policy, and then they are presented with a considerable bill for payment.
In order to appeal such actions, the client needs to clearly understand which services are included in the system of state guarantees and which can be provided exclusively on a paid basis. You need to understand that the state guarantee does not apply to foreign products.
All citizens insured under compulsory medical insurance, upon the occurrence of an insured event, can count on free medical care within the framework of the territorial compulsory medical insurance program (based on Article 4 326-FZ of 2010 “On compulsory health insurance in the Russian Federation”).
In order for the provision of paid services to take place legally, the doctor must correctly draw up all the documents together with the patient:
- voluntary refusal of services with Russian-made products;
- consent to voluntary treatment using a paid analogue;
- agreement for the provision of paid services.
Thus, an offer to provide a service on a paid basis in compulsory medical insurance will not always be considered a violation.
In some cases, compulsory medical insurance covers only part of the costs of dental treatment . The list of free dental services included in compulsory medical insurance may vary depending on the region of residence of the patient (the regional guarantee system may introduce additional medical services into the insurance or, conversely, exclude some of them).
The legislation provides for the following areas of treatment: therapeutic dentistry, pediatric and surgical. Insured persons can take X-rays free of charge, receive orthopedic and periodontal care, but for a limited list of services.
The compulsory medical insurance policy provides for a dental examination, caries treatment and filling, inflammation therapy, teeth cleaning and tartar removal, traumatology, dental canal cleaning, extraction, preparation for prosthetics, ultrasound, etc. But all services will use domestically produced materials. Lidocaine will be offered as a free anesthesia, and to replace it with a Western, milder analogue, you will have to pay extra. Tooth extraction (even if you have to cut the gum) is also allowed.
Prosthetics in dentistry are paid; they are available free of charge only to beneficiaries: veterans and combat veterans.
It will not be possible to restore a crown for free, correct deficiencies in treatment by another doctor, whiten the enamel and undergo other procedures in the field of aesthetic dentistry, install implants, correct the bite with braces, etc.
To clarify the list of services that are required under compulsory medical insurance, the patient can call the insurance company . Patient complaints about paid services are not always justified, and some services can only be provided on a reimbursable basis. In this case, the patient will have to pay. But if a paid service was nevertheless imposed on him, then he can proceed to appeal.
Scheme No. 3
Treatment of non-existent diseases or inventing serious diseases. For example, a doctor treats serious caries, which is actually a stain on the enamel and does not require treatment, or periodontitis, which is tartar, or caries passes off as pulpitis.
To avoid this, you can ask the doctor to show the tooth in a mirror or using a magnifying intraoral video camera . Hidden problems can only be detected with the help of an x-ray or tomograph. If the doctor does not provide any evidence, then this is a reason to be wary.
You also need to focus on your feelings: if the patient has short-term pain from cold air, then this is a sign of deep caries; removal of the nerve is not required. If the pain is aching and it hurts to press on the tooth, then this is already pulpitis and the nerve needs to be removed.
Scheme No. 4
The doctor replaces old fillings without reason or removes a tooth just for implantation. You need to understand that fillings are removed only if they have worn out or lost their tightness, and implantation is indicated only if a tooth is missing . In other cases, the doctor must make every attempt to save the tooth.
Scheme No. 5
The doctor performs unnecessary procedures: for example, a panoramic image when treating pulpitis, 3D tomography when treating caries, and whitens teeth before braces.
Scheme No. 6
The final price turns out to be more than agreed upon. The dentist must provide a reason why this is happening. If the doctor wrote down procedures on the check that he did not perform, then this is a reason for appeal.
How to write a complaint correctly if a service has been imposed on you?
If a service has been imposed on the consumer, then the best way to protect rights is to file a written claim addressed to the seller.
In the document, indicate the following:
- Name and other details of the seller.
- Your details (full name, residential address and contact phone number).
- Describe the violation in detail.
- Provide a reference to the legal provisions relating to the violation.
- Indicate the amount of losses.
- State your existing requirements.
- Attach documentary evidence of the violation to the claim. In this capacity, copies of checks, contracts and other documents can be considered.
- Put the date and signature.
