This Wednesday, the Paris commercial court must rule on the compulsory liquidation from Indexia, billionaire Sadri Fegaier’s group of multimedia insurance companies. Among these companies, Sfam and Hubside are particularly well known to many French people, victims of undue deductions which can amount to tens of thousands of euros in a few years. Some wanted to tell 20 minutes this traumatic experience.
Many of our readers responded to our call, and the testimonies received all tell the same story. The problem often started with a visit to Fnac, to Darty, to a HubsideStore store or to the Hubside website. “I noticed strange deductions from my account after purchasing a drone from Fnac,” explains Pascal, 64. For Alain, it dates back to 2019, after the purchase of “a refurbished laptop in a HubsideStore in Villeneuve-d’Ascq”. It was “a Bluetooth headset” for his daughter purchased “at Fnac at the beginning of 2018”, Ahmet remembers very well.
Fallen into the trap, voluntarily or not
After the purchase, two scenarios emerged. For his daughter’s 269 euro headphones, Ahmet gave in to the seller who offered him “insurance and which we could cancel within two weeks”. At 15.99 euros per month, he agrees to commit to one year before starting the termination procedure. “Despite several registered letters with return receipt, the withdrawals continued for 6 or 7 months with always the same amount,” assures Ahmet. Same thing for Bruno, Denis or Mélanie, who saw the amount of their telephone insurance continue to be deducted despite the cancellation of the contract.
Others discovered they had signed up for different services without even knowing it. “I saw myself suddenly deducted two amounts of 150 euros per month. After seeking clarification, I was informed that it was an automatic subscription,” rages Mio, 26 years old. “I never signed a contract and I sometimes found myself with four direct debits of 69 euros per month instead of 29.99 euros,” Patrice also protests.
Serial withdrawals and ubiquitous amounts
“I am the victim of several hundred debits which amount to several thousand euros,” assures Julien, 28 years old. “They took more than 500 euros from me in one month for a contract of normally 25 euros per month,” adds Samuel. Olivier saw 700 euros disappear in three months, with peaks of “sometimes four withdrawals per month”. Even worse for Amélie, 36, who has “observed 26 withdrawals of 29.99 euros and 69.99 euros since December, for a total amount of 1,059.74 euros”. And what about the case of Cindy, debited “49.99 euros up to 12 times in the same month”, for damage she estimates at 2,800 euros? Or Zohra, stripped “sometimes twice a day, four to five times a week”?
The sad record goes to Huguette, 76, after she took out insurance for her husband’s cell phone at 4.99 euros per month. “Sfam took this amount from me several times. Then it was bigger and bigger amounts,” she explains. Nearly 2,000 euros last month, 36 withdrawals which left Huguette broke. In total, the septuagenarian was robbed of 17,000 euros.
Once a victim, always a victim
Steps to cancel subscriptions, whether taken out voluntarily or not, are almost never successful. “I was deducted for more than two years even though I had canceled the contract several times,” testifies Anaïs. Between “lost mail and catastrophic telephone service”, Claire fought “for weeks” to terminate a contract. “And then almost two years after finally canceling everything, I discovered a charge on my account out of nowhere,” she is still surprised. Denis lost 3,000 euros between September and December 2022 for insurance that he thought had been canceled two years ago. It was five years after ending her mobile insurance that Lucia suffered a return from Sfam, with “two deductions of 19.99 euros and 69.99 euros”.
These scandalous practices hit rock bottom with the cases of Amélie and Odile. The first, who said she had been wrongly charged around thirty times, contacted customer service by telephone to complain about her situation. As soon as she hung up the receiver, she received two emails informing her that she had just subscribed to a new service billed at 9.99 euros per month! Odile noticed when checking her deceased mother’s accounts that the latter was being deducted several hundred euros each month by Sfam.
Between resignation, complaint and paranoid
Among the numerous testimonies received, many have filed complaints and are impatiently waiting for the courts to decide. In most cases, complaints to Hubside or Sfam resulted in no reimbursement, or a partial reimbursement of the sums unduly debited. The victims’ banks seem quite understanding, both in reimbursing abusive direct debits and in blocking future direct debits. However, some of our readers, like Amélie, had to resolve to close their bank account to resolve the problem.
But everyone has developed a form of paranoia that is unfortunately justified. Anaïs now scrutinizes her bank accounts: “you must always be vigilant because the withdrawals can reappear,” she fears. “Defrauded of 700 euros”, Christophe “checks his account all the time” too.
With the untimely withdrawals from Sfam, Mélanie “found herself having difficulty paying her charges for several months”. Stripped of 2,800 euros, Cindy, “part-time bakery saleswoman with a salary of 900 euros”, accuses Hubside of having put her “in a very precarious situation”.