The Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (Italian Competition Authority, ICA) terminated three investigation proceedings for unfair commercial practices, at the meeting held on August 1st, 2018, fining Wind Tre S.p.A. Telecom Italia S.p.A. and Vodafone Italia S.p.A. for a total amount of 3.2 million euros.

According to the ICA, the three companies engaged in aggressive behaviour, violating Articles 24 and 25 of the Consumer Code, sending payment reminder letters to customers that were deemed to be in arrears, and threatening to add their names to a database, called S.I.Mo.I.Tel., which is not yet operational and has no specified purpose, in order to force them to pay the requested charges.

The ICA discovered that, although only the names of 'intentional arrears’ customers should have been added to this database, according to certain requirements, the three operators also sent reminders to customers who did not qualify as such, because they did not meet all the registration requirements, including users who could oppose the validity of the debt claimed by the operator.

The ICA deemed that the indication of the possible registration in the S.I.Mo.I.Tel. database could influence the recipients of the reminder notice to pay the requested amounts. In fact, the operators, exploiting the threat of resorting to a tool established as a form of self-protection for the market against intentional defaulters, but not yet active, induced the recipients into believing that regardless of the validity of their potentially uncertain and/or subject to dispute debt position, it would be better to pay the requested amount in order to avoid being registered in the database, with the possible consequence of not being able to conclude contracts with other telephone operators.

Dawn-raids were carried out during the preliminary investigations, with the help of the Special Antitrust Unit of Guardia di Finanza.

Rome, 08 August 2018