The March 2023 cold-calling law explained

Decree n° 2022-1313 of October 13, 2022 came into force on March 1, 2023. It aims to regulate the days, hours and frequency of phone calls made for unsolicited commercial prospecting. In practice, it limits phone calls to landlines and mobiles, as well as text messages, that bother you all day long trying to sell you products, services and solutions you don’t need. Here is what this March 2023 cold-calling law promises.

N.B. Some are surprised that the March 2023 cold-calling law covers landlines, wondering whether these lines still exist. Indeed, in the age of smartphones, who still uses a landline? The answer: a few million French people living in so-called “white zones.” In these regions truly forgotten by public authorities, mobile signal is weak or nonexistent, and fiber access remains a distant utopia. The landline is therefore the only way to communicate. As the number of landlines has fallen, calls are increasingly concentrated on the same people, which is why they suffer daily calls from call centers, particularly between noon and 2pm and after 7pm, as well as on weekends, including Sunday mornings.

What is Bloctel?

Bloctel is a free service, launched on June 1, 2016 by the company Opposetel. It lets you register up to ten landline or mobile phone numbers to opt out of telephone cold calling. Following Decree n° 2021-1528 of November 26, 2021, since January 1, 2022 your registration on the Bloctel list has been tacitly renewed every three years. Cold-calling companies are therefore theoretically prohibited from contacting you if you are registered on the Bloctel list.

However, this system is weakened by exceptions that allow calls if:

• they are made under an ongoing contract;
• they come from polling institutes or non-profit associations;
• they concern the supply of newspapers, periodicals or magazines;
• they do not constitute commercial prospecting;
• they fall within the scope of a public service.

Contracts currently in force include:

• open-ended service contracts that only end upon termination;
• service contracts with successive or ongoing performance over time, such as subscriptions;
• fixed-term contracts currently in effect.

Operators often work around these restrictions to legitimize their calls, when they don’t simply ignore their obligations altogether. People registered on the Bloctel list very often complain of still being regularly disturbed by unwanted advertising calls. In that case, they must report it on the Bloctel website.

The March 2023 cold-calling law aims to strengthen the Bloctel system.

What is the goal of the decree behind the March 2023 cold-calling law?

The new March 2023 cold-calling law regulates these calls, which mostly come from foreign countries where operators mispronounce your name and speak very approximate French. These “offshored” companies build the fortune of savvy entrepreneurs who take advantage of low labor costs abroad. Beyond the nuisance caused, the reliability of the offers made is not always proven, and some proposals even turn out to be outright fraudulent.

Some cold-calling companies are based in France, which in no way reduces the nuisance caused, nor the risk of fraudulent offers.

Who is affected by the March 2023 cold-calling law?

The March 2023 cold-calling law sets the days, hours and frequency at which consumers can be contacted by phone. It applies to everyone, whether or not you are registered on the Bloctel list.

However, the law does not apply if the consumer has given prior consent to be called. In that case, the business must be able to prove the person’s approval.

Note that the decree does not apply to telephone solicitations aimed at professionals.

Commercial prospecting managed from abroad

Any subcontractor based outside France is required to comply with the March 2023 cold-calling law. It is up to the client company to ensure that its foreign service provider complies with the law.

What changes with the March 2023 cold-calling law

Limits on weekday cold calling

The first limit imposed by the March 2023 cold-calling law applies to hours. Calls are now only allowed Monday to Friday, from 10am to 1pm and from 2pm to 8pm. They are prohibited on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays.

Limit on the number of calls

The other restriction concerns the number of calls you may receive. It must not exceed four per month (30 calendar days) from the same company offering you products or services, or from the provider it subcontracts its calls to.

If you state your refusal to be called during a solicitation, you cannot be called back before a full period of 60 calendar days has elapsed from the date of refusal.

How consumer consent must be collected

The March 2023 cold-calling law does not apply if you have given your consent beforehand as a consumer. This means you must freely and unambiguously provide your number to a business so that it can call you. In that case, the business may contact you outside the days, hours and frequency set by the decree. However, it must meet certain conditions:

• before your phone details are shared, the business must have clearly and legibly informed you of the possibility of being called back by its company or by a third party acting on its behalf;
• this consent must have been specifically obtained for making phone calls;
• the call must only concern the products and services for which you gave your agreement;
• the callback must take place within a reasonable time, unless you requested to be called back on a deadline date that you set yourself.

In the event of a dispute, the burden of proving consent to be called always falls on the company.

The 33 700 scheme to fight unwanted texts

Unwanted solicitation doesn’t only affect phone calls, but also text messages. If you receive texts from providers you never contacted, you are invited to forward the unwanted message by SMS to 33 700 or via the 33700.fr website, which allows you to report the offending company.

Each report is forwarded to the operator of the party behind the text. That party will then be contacted and ordered to stop these now-prohibited practices.

Penalties for companies that fail to comply with the March 2023 cold-calling law

Anyone violating the March 2023 cold-calling law is liable to a penalty. This takes the form of an administrative fine provided for in Article L. 242-16 of the French Consumer Code, i.e. €75,000 for an individual and €375,000 for a company.