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EXPLAINED: What are France’s new rules on cold-callers?

Cold-callers in France have been subject to new restrictions since the beginning of March, thanks to a new law taking effect.

Published: 14 October 2022 16:26 CEST
Updated: 3 March 2023 16:12 CET
EXPLAINED: What are France's new rules on cold-callers?
People work on September 10, 2009 in Paris at the call center of the Iliad group (Photo by Lionel BONAVENTURE / AFP)

Cold-calling, or telephone canvassing, has been banned on evening, weekends, public holidays and at lunch-time as of March 1st.

The new regulation concerns commercial phone calls (eg from call centres), and it means that telephone canvassing will only be allowed between the hours of 10am to 1pm and 2pm to 8pm, from Monday to Friday, according to the French ministry of economy.

This framework applies both to people who registered on block lists to avoid telephone canvassing and those who have not done so. However, if the consumer “gave his/her express consent to be called” then they can still be contacted during these times. The professional representing the call centre will have to justify this, however. 

READ MORE: France orders cold-callers to use 09 prefix phone numbers

Additionally, the new legal framework makes it so that a person cannot be solicited “by telephone for commercial prospecting more than four times a month by the same business (or person acting on the business’ behalf).”

Also, if a customer says they do not wish to be contacted or solicited, then the call centre must refrain from contacting (or attempting to reach them) for at least 60 days after the refusal.

Violating these rules could mean hefty fines – for individuals, this could be up to €75,000, and for companies this could be up to €375,000.

In 2022, France brought in a new rule requiring all call centres to use phone numbers with a 09 prefix, in order to allow customers to recognise the call. 

What can else can I do stop other fraudulent calls and texts?

When it comes to text messages, you can reply to the number – as long as it is a five-digit one beginning with 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8, with a simple message: STOP. 

Reputable businesses will respect your instruction to be removed from their database of numbers.

Similarly, if you send the word CONTACT to the sender, they should text you their customer service phone number. Both the STOP and CONTACT message will cost you the price of a standard text.

You may prefer not to engage with the original text message. In which case, you can forward it to the official Spam SMS service on 33700, and they will follow up on your behalf.

READ MORE: What you can do in France to stop fraudulent and spam phone calls and texts

For phone calls, you can try signing up for the government programme, Bloctel, which removes your phone number from commercially-available telephone lists for a period of three years. In theory, this means that you should be protected against telephone solicitation with the aim of selling you products or services. 

You can register either a landline number or a mobile number. In theory, companies should consult Bloctel lists before starting call campaigns, and scrub numbers that are on it.

Sadly, Bloctel is not as effective as it could be, in part because it requires active participation from users, who are asked to flag-up the numbers of unsolicited callers – and that process is longer and more complicated than it needs to be.

Still, consumer watchdog UFC-Que Choisir recommends signing up, because it is better than not being on the list.

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BUSINESS

French barber still trimming at 90

French barber Roger Amilhastre could have hung up his clippers decades ago but he said his passion for the business gives him a reason to get up in the morning.

Published: 26 April 2024 15:01 CEST
French barber still trimming at 90

“I love this job, it’s in my bones,” the 90 year old said, leaning on one of his cast-iron barber’s chairs from the 1940s.

“And despite my age, my hands still don’t shake.”

Even with arthritis, he is on his feet from Tuesday to Saturday, tending to his customers’ hair and beards in his shop in the small southern town of Saint-Girons, in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

“I would have liked to retire at 60, but my wife was sick and I needed to pay for the care home,” he said, which cost more than €2,000 a month.

Even after his wife died in January, he kept going to work to stave off sad thoughts.

“I’m not grumpy getting up [to go to work],” he said.

France’s national hairdressers’ union believes Amilhastre may be the country’s oldest active barber.

“We have a few who continue late in life, but 90 years old is exceptional,” union president Christophe Dore told AFP.

“I’m not sure if he is France’s oldest barber, but if not, he can’t be far off.”

According to national statistics institute INSEE, a little more than half a million people over 65 still work in France.

In the southern region of Occitanie, where Amilhastre lives, only 1.65 percent of people older than 70 years old still work, including 190 79-year-olds. But statistics do not go beyond that age.

Many of Amilhastre’s customers call him Achille, after his father who founded the barber’s shop in 1932, giving it his name and then teaching his son the profession.

The shop witnessed the German occupation of France during World War II.

“During the war, German police came to find my father to groom a captain who had broken his leg,” Amilhastre said.

German troops had taken over a large stately home in town called Beauregard.

“We were scared because they used to say that anyone who went up to Beauregard never came back,” he said. “Luckily, he did.”

He said he remembered a “tough period” for businesses when he first picked up the scissors in 1947.

But then the town rebounded, he said, with its men following a flurry of new hair trends from greased quiffs in the 1950s, to 1970s bowl cuts.

The barber’s shop survived an economic downturn as local paper mills closed in the 1980s sparking mass layoffs, and supermarkets pushed small shops out of business.

“People started looking for work further afield, so we had to adapt and stay open later in the evening,” Amilhastre said.

That same decade, the Aids epidemic worried customers, who understood little about the illness at the time.

“People were scared,” Amilhastre said. “They no longer asked to be shaved and when we did, we were petrified there’d be a cut, that someone would bleed and the virus would be passed on to the next customer.” 

Jean-Louis Surre, 67, runs the nearby cafe where Amilhastre once taught him to play billiards as a young boy.

Behind his bar, Surre said he remembered his mother taking him across the road to see Amilhastre for a haircut every month as a child.

“He’d pump up the chair to reach the mirror, use his clippers and then at the end perfume you with some cologne – you know, squeezing those little pumps,” he said.

He is one of several older customers to regularly drop by Achille’s – even just to read the newspaper or have a chat.

Inside the barber’s, Jean Laffitte, a balding 84-year-old, said he no longer really needed a haircut. “With what little is left up there, these days I come out of friendship,” he said.

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