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Friday, January 14, 2005

Altex fouls its customers

Finaly, it came clear. The spot that we all have seen on TV about Altex, where you can get a credit line using only your ID card, is nothing but pure fiction.

The Romanian Consumer Protection Association (APC) made some investigations and they found out that the advertisment was actualy hiding a lot of things. Let's do a recap. The commercial said you can get a credit line using only your ID and that this credit line was up to 20.000.0000 lei.

Actualy, what the guys from APC found out is this:
- Altex performs a checkout on all its potential customers and check if they have a place where they work for more than 6 months and if they have a minimum income of at least 2.250.000 / month. This is something they do, but the potential customer knows nothing about it.

- The 20 milion lei limit is only applicable if you have a 30-days credit. For a 6 months credit the limit is 18 milion and for a 5 years credit the limit is 12 milion. The difference goes in some taxes you have to pay about which, again, you know nothing about.

According to Romanian Law nr. 148/2000 about advertisements, they have to ensure the information is correct, that the information is not misleading and that the information is complete. This is exactly what didn't happen with Altex.

For me, it's a big shame this happened, specially with a company that has as main values offering good satisfaction and comfort for its clients.

Posted by Mihai : 1/14/2005 10:36:00 am