Spain’s Congress has given closing approval to the brand new Customer Service Law (Ley de Servicios de Atención a la Clientela), a groundbreaking regulation aimed toward defending customers from abusive practices by massive corporations. The regulation, beforehand generally known as the Customer Service Law, was handed over the past plenary session of the yr earlier than the Christmas break.
The laws introduces stricter requirements for customer support in key sectors, addressing long-standing complaints about limitless telephone waits, unsolicited gross sales calls, and opaque enterprise practices.
Who it impacts
The measures apply to corporations offering important providers resembling water, electrical energy, fuel, telecommunications, banking, and transportation, in addition to any agency with greater than 250 staff or annual billing exceeding €50 million.
Crackdown on spam calls
Companies should use a definite prefix quantity for gross sales calls, separate from these used for customer support. Telecom operators will probably be obligated to dam calls from corporations not complying with this rule. An exemption applies to electrical energy, fuel, and telephony suppliers with lower than 5 per cent nationwide market share. So wave goodbye to the telephone firm calling you to promote photo voltaic panels, and your financial institution calling to flog life insurance coverage.
Wait instances and human interplay – I need to converse to a human!
Years in the past, this Euro Weekly News reporter spent a complete of 8 hours on the telephone at some point to Vodafone Spain customer support (based mostly in Colombia on the time) to vary his checking account particulars and activate roaming (sure, again in these darkish days). From 2026, clients achieve the proper to request service from a human agent moderately than an automatic system. Companies should make sure that 95 per cent of calls are answered, on common, inside three minutes!
Transparent pricing . Those extra extras
The regulation bans including sudden extras, resembling administration charges, to the ultimate worth. The quantity proven at first of a transaction should match the ultimate invoice precisely.
Automatic subscriptions – Am I nonetheless paying a subscription to that?
For auto-renewing subscriptions, corporations should notify clients at the very least 15 days upfront of renewal and supply a straightforward cancellation technique. This regulation couldn’t come sooner!
Phone contracts
Contracts signed throughout unsolicited gross sales calls will probably be thought-about null and void until the client explicitly confirms the settlement. Avoid the phrase ‘sure’ as will probably be recorded, until in fact you truly need it.
Enforcement and penalties
Regional governments will impose fines, probably as much as 5 per cent of an organization’s annual income for violations. Firms should conduct annual inside audits on customer support high quality and publish the outcomes on their web sites.
Consumer Rights Minister Pablo Bustinduy celebrated the regulation as a historic step towards fairer consumer-company relations, stressing personalised and respectful service. The laws is anticipated to be printed within the Official State Gazette (BOE) quickly and take impact in early 2026.
