Who has never been approached, by SMS or phone call, to register for a training so as not to lose the credits of their professional training account? Indeed, for some time, the CPF has been the subject of untimely telephone canvassing which poisons the lives of many French people. But rest assured, there are solutions to put an end to it, starting with the Bloctel device. This was explained by a lawyer specializing in the law of new technologies to our colleagues from the Journal du Geek.
The CPF was created in 2014, as part of the vocational training reform. This is a public funding scheme that allows anyone who is employed or registered with Pôle Emploi to accumulate hours of personal training. But in 2019, these hours were converted into euros allowing its beneficiary to register for training and pay for it himself online.
But it gave ideas to some scammers. Indeed, at the rate of 500 euros per year and capped at 5,000 euros, multiplied by the 38 million French people concerned, this represents nearly 53 billion euros to be diverted. Hence an explosion in the number of door-to-door sales calls linked to the CPF. All means are good to convince individuals to register for imaginary and fraudulent training. And more particularly to claim that if the credits are not quickly used, they will be lost. This is totally wrong.
Indeed, as recalled by the Caisse des Dépôts, the CPF will never approach individuals and only the official website moncompteformation.gouv.fr allows you to use your CPF credits in complete safety. All other calls from so-called organizations or training centers are just canvassing aimed at defrauding you. If the government is working to completely ban cold calling linked to the personal training account, there are other solutions in the meantime. And the most effective, as explained by the lawyer specializing in new technologies law to our colleagues, consists in registering on the centralized file of opposition to canvassing, Bloctel.
“From there, the canvasser no longer has the right to call you, and if he has already done so, he can no longer give your contact details to other companies”, explains the lawyer. The only exceptions relate to the sale of newspapers or the existence of an ongoing contractual relationship. Polling institutes, which are not for commercial purposes, may also contact individuals registered on the Bloctel lists.
On the other hand, any other direct seller who persists despite this legal prohibition, and in particular fake CPF organizations, is exposed to penalties of up to 75,000 euros for a natural person and 375,000 euros for a legal person. The law also provides that any contract signed in the context of illegal canvassing will be considered void.
