A Mercantile Court condemns Orange for including clients in a file who deny having paid the debt they are claiming. The judge considered that this process of an abusive practice is that the conduct can only have the real purpose of harming the client's reputation or serving as a means of pressure to comply with the company's requirements and pay the originating debt initially discussed.
The Public Prosecutor exercised a collective action for cessation through which it seeks the immediate cessation of the conduct of Orange, which it considered harmful to the rights and interests of consumers, consisting of the inclusion in patrimonial solvency files or credit information systems for clients who have unsubscribed from their services or demonstrated portability to another operator, based on alleged debts that said clients did not pay because they were not satisfied with them.
Debtors Registrar
The judge hears that this insertion of personal data in the records of defaulters for non-payment of claimed debts once their contractual relationship has ended, despite the fact that these clients never failed to pay other debts previously, does not fulfill the legitimate purpose of such records
When the debt has not been legally claimed, and the affected person had never defaulted or been previously included by other creditors in delinquent files, there is no real reason to doubt their financial solvency or to be able to consider them as someone that throws risk of incurring late payment in the fulfillment of its monetary obligations in general.
Therefore, the magistrates claim that the inclusion of people in these circumstances in the aforementioned files can only have the real objective of harming their reputation, as revenge for opposing the payment of a debt that Orange considers legitimate, or well and serve as a means of pressure to comply with the company's requirements and proceed to pay the debt whose origin was initially discussed.
This practice, the judgment concludes, implies a clear breach of the legitimate purpose of the patrimonial solvency files, which implies the illegitimacy of the inclusion and a possible violation of the most basic rights of consumers (generally including the fundamental right to honor ).
Consequently, it orders Orange to immediately cease the abusive practices and not to repeat said conduct in the future.
