Need to call customer service, technical assistance or after -sales service of a seller, a manufacturer or a supplier? Use your non -surcharged phone number rather than its paying number, too often highlighted!

Need to call customer service, technical assistance or after -sales service of a seller, a manufacturer or a supplier? Use your non -surcharged phone number rather than its paying number, too often highlighted!

You have probably already noticed, many companies – traders, manufacturers, suppliers, etc. – Systematically highlight a surcharged phone number – and therefore paying! – For their customer service, their hotline (technical assistance) or their after -sales service. A legal but regrettable practice, which allows them to garner substantial annexed income thanks to the SVA system (value added services), as we explain in our article devoted to special and surcharged numbers.

In fact, it is not normal to have to pay when you want to obtain information, place an order, return a product or request technical assistance, especially when you are a customer, in other words, when you have already paid a good or a service. The worst part is that certain public services also use this lucrative system, forcing users to go through a surcharged number to have telephone contact. For example, in 2020, the 39,39, the short number used for different administrative services, is still billed 0.15 euros per minute…

Non -surcharged number: a legal obligation

Fortunately, things have changed, both for commercial companies and for public organizations, the legislator having set new strict and clear rules to protect consumers and users from certain abusive practices.

First, article L121-84-5 of the 2008 law for the development of competition at the service of consumers-known as Chatel law-has prohibited internet access providers (ISP) and telephone operators (fixed and mobile) to use surcharged numbers for their assistance services (hotlines) or their departments responsible for processing complaints. Then, article 87 of the law of modernization of the economy – known as LME – of 2008 laid the principle of a call number not surcharged for consumer phone calls “in order to obtain the proper execution of a contract concluded with a professional or the processing of a complaint”. A principle that applies both to the sale of material goods as well as to the provision of services. Finally, on January 25, 2018, the National Assembly voted for the end of surcharge calls to administration and public services. This measure, which will be effective in early 2021, will lead to the creation of a free fixed number. It was time!

Thus, for several years, companies – whatever their field of activity – have been obliged to put a non -surcharged number available to their customers. Technical assistance of telephone operators and ISPs must be accessible to all their subscribers without any additional cost. And traders as service providers no longer have the right to tax the means of access to the right of withdrawal, order monitoring or the exercise of the guarantee. Since 2020, short numbers of certain public services – or assimilated – and other large companies are no longer surcharged. This is the case, for example, of 36,46 of health insurance (Ameli) or 36,65 of the SNCF.

However, if all the merchants, manufacturers and service providers now comply with this legislation, many do not really play the game and continue to favor their overcrowd number, sometimes on all the pages of their website. Consumer associations How the UFC-Que Choisir regularly point to online merchants like Cdiscount or RueDucommerce who continue to highlight their paid number, even in their contact page, which obliges their customers to carry out forbidden research on the Internet to find the famous non-surcharged number, which still exists. But this is also the case for certain brands of large distribution, such as action or Aldi.

Lists of non -surcharged customer services numbers

To avoid long research on the web, here is a non -exhaustive and scalable list of non -surcharged telephone numbers of the customer services of the main merchants, manufacturers, operators, suppliers and service providers, classified by main categories. Note that the short numbers indicated (three or four -digit) are not (or more) surcharged, unlike that their type can suggest, just as the numbers starting with 08 – it is clear that non -geographic long numbers starting by 09 are much more reassuring … Be careful, not surcharged does not always mean free; Most often, the call is included in free communications from a fixed line – with an internet box -, but, in some cases, communication can be deducted from the mobile package, when it is not unlimited.