Acm.nl uses cookies to analyze how the website is used, and to improve the user experience. Read more about cookies

ACM warns consumers against telemarketing practices involving home batteries: hang up, or record your call

Summary

  • ACM has launched an investigation after receiving reports about misleading telemarketing practices involving home batteries.
  • Home batteries are complicated products that should not be purchased over unsolicited phone calls.
  • ACM advises consumers who continue with the conversation anyway to record their calls on their mobile phones.

Over the past six months, the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) has received hundreds of reports about fraudulent telemarketing practices involving home batteries, and launched an investigation on the basis of these reports. Home batteries are complicated products that should not be purchased over unsolicited phone calls. That is why ACM advises individuals that receive unsolicited phone calls to end these conversations and hang up. If you continue with the conversation anyway, do not be tempted into digitally signing anything, and record the conversation with your mobile phone. In that way, you can always listen back to the conversation, and you have proof of what has been agreed to.

Stories shared by consumers reveal that people are often called multiple times, and feel pressured to continue with the conversation anyway. ACM advises individuals that continue with the conversation anyway to record their calls with their mobile phones. If they do, ACM recommends that consumers clearly state to telemarketers that their call is being recorded. The telemarketer is not allowed to refuse this, but may decide to end the conversation. On the website of ACM’s consumer information portal ACM ConsuWijzer, you can find information on how you can record a phone call with your mobile phone.

Hang up, or record your call

Manon Leijten, Member of the Board of ACM, explains: “As we receive a lot of reports about fraudulent telemarketing practices involving home batteries, we wish to warn people against such practices. If you receive an unsolicited phone call about purchasing a home battery, the easiest thing to do is obviously ending the conversation and hanging up. If you decide to continue with the conversation anyway, it is wise to record the call with your mobile phone. In that way, you clearly register what has been discussed.”

Cancelling a purchase made over the phone

In the case of telemarketing sales or door-to-door sales, consumers always have the ability to cancel the contract within 14 days for free. If consumers are not properly informed during the call about this statutory cooling-off period, the cooling-off period can be as long as one year. Consumers who were misled during the call, for example because they received wrong or incomplete information, are able to rescind their contracts. In that way, they annul the contract, as if it had never existed. On ACM ConsuWijzer (in Dutch) you can find recommendations and sample letters for consumers who wish to cancel the purchase of a home battery or rescind the purchase contract.

The methods of fraudulent telemarketers

Reports filed with ACM reveal that telemarketers selling home batteries use all sorts of different company names, or pose as representatives of energy suppliers, for example. As a result, it is often not clear to customers from what company they received a call. During such calls, individuals are tempted into digitally signing something. They are under the impression that, for example, they are agreeing to making an appointment or to receiving an offer without obligation, but it turns out later that they signed a purchase contract for a home battery. These contracts often involve tens of thousands of euros, which need to be repaid through loans.

Depending on how they are used, home batteries can help accelerate the energy transition, for example if they are used to store self-generated solar power temporarily, which is subsequently used later that day. However, it is not true that households with solar panels always recoup the costs of a home battery within a few years. That is why ACM advises people who wish to purchase home batteries to conduct thorough research of their own, and to compare different home battery types and models thoroughly. On the website of Dutch environmental awareness organization Milieu Centraal, you can find a lot of information about the sustainability aspects and payback periods of home batteries.

See also

Back to top