A fine was imposed on the imposed services – Kommersant FM

Companies will begin to impose fines for imposing additional services, this applies to optional work or goods that are persistently offered to the consumer for a fee. Now, for such actions, legal entities will have to pay a fine of 20 thousand rubles. up to 40 thousand rubles, and for officials – from 2 thousand rubles. up to 4 thousand rubles, follows from the document signed by Vladimir Putin. But will this help solve the problem? Vladislav Viktorov sorted it out.

Formally, the imposition of any additional services is considered an administrative offense from 2022. But all this time the companies could not be fined because there was no separate law. Now the president has signed the document detailing the penalties.

From now on, for example, car dealers who require the buyer to take out insurance or purchase additional equipment will have to pay a fine of 20 thousand rubles themselves. up to 40 thousand rubles.

And this norm should change the situation on the market, believes the chairman of the National Union for the Protection of Consumer Rights, Pavel Shapkin: “In general, the entire insurance sector is imposed on us, starting with train tickets, when you are offered to take out a policy, although the carrier’s liability is already insured. If you receive a loan, they sell you life insurance; if you buy a car, the company sells you three more products.

If now it becomes an administrative offense, then this is already a turn, even if it is followed by just a warning.

The very drawing up of a protocol on an administrative offense is an excellent evidence base in court.”

However, some experts are perplexed by the size of the fines. It is small, and therefore is unlikely to encourage companies to preventively refuse to impose additional services. Moreover, the fines themselves will not be issued automatically.

To do this, the client needs to file a complaint against the company and then, perhaps, it will be punished, explained the leading lawyer of the consumer rights protection society “Public Control” Oleg Frolov: “Given the fact that these complaints and appeals are rare, and the conclusion of contracts amounts to tens and hundreds, Accordingly, the profit covers the fine that will be identified.

In addition, you must immediately state that you did not agree with any service in advance. The court, naturally, will find out the whole story: whether there was an opportunity to refuse, how well the conditions were prepared, etc.”

At the same time, recently the authorities have adopted several laws, which, according to the idea, should relieve citizens of imposed additional services. In the case of banks, for example, a so-called cooling period has appeared, according to which the client has the opportunity to refuse optional options within two weeks.

However, this does not prevent companies from persistently offering their terms. Including because it is not easy to prove their guilt in the courts, explained Anton Bakulin, Chairman of the ABS Bar Association:

“Now I encounter this practice to a lesser extent. Legislative regulation is becoming more stringent, plus the concept of a “cooling off period” has been introduced.

I don’t really understand how the fact of imposition will be proven, whether it will be confirmed by witness testimony, or whether we are talking about the number of calls, spam, SMS mailings, and so on.

The wording often causes certain difficulties in interpretation in law enforcement practice.”

In addition, these provisions are easy to circumvent, as, for example, banks do when they offer a reduced loan rate for purchasing insurance. As experts note, formally it is possible to refuse an additional service, but whether it is worth it is up to the market to decide.

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