By decision dated March 22, 2022, the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) imposed on the company Iliad Italia Srl (hereinafter “Iliad”) a fine of 1.2 million euros for misleading commercial practices against consumers.

According to the CIA, Iliad committed two distinct unfair commercial practices. The first contested practice concerned the omission and/or misleading disclosure of certain essential information relating to mobile phone offers. In particular, the company advertised a service as compatible with 5G technology but completely failed to communicate, or communicated in an unclear way to users, the geographical and technological conditions necessary to be able to use the service. Due to the absence or limited availability of this information in the advertising messages, Iliad prevented consumers from understanding that to benefit from the promotion (i) it was essential to be in the geographical area covered by the 5G network from Iliad and (ii) it was necessary to be equipped with a mobile model compatible with Iliad’s 5G network, which was not supported by all 5G-compatible devices.

The second disputed commercial practice concerned the use of the words “100 gigs, minutes and unlimited SMS in Italy and Europe” sent by SMS to former Iliad customers to promote the “Flash 100 5G” offer. Such wording, according to the ICA, could have led the recipient of the offer to believe that the 100 GB is valid for all European data traffic, when in reality only 6 GB was actually available to consumers in Europe. .

The ICA found that these practices violated Articles 21 and 22 of the Italian Consumer Code because they were misleading, i.e. likely to mislead the consumer about essential elements of the contract such as the characteristics of a product, leading the consumer to make a commercial decision that he would not have made otherwise. In particular, the ICA considered that Iliad’s behavior was likely to induce the consumer to respond to the promotional offer without being able to make an informed and conscious choice.

In view of the seriousness of the behavior found, the ICA imposed a fine of 1.2 million euros, then reduced it by 100,000 euros “taking into account the negative economic situation in which the company finds itself” .