Álvaro Vega I Córdoba, (EFE) for the improper collection of two concepts in their invoices throughout the region for ten years.
The prosecutor who formalized this first action in Spain in defense of consumer rights, Fernando Santos Urbaneja, has defended in an interview with EFE that “it would be good if what we could not return”, which reverts to the State treasury, as in the case of Canada, which “is expected” to be allocated “to consumer associations”.
The representative of the Public Ministry specifies that the volume not returned and that the State will keep represents around 20 percent of the between 110,000 and 115,000 families benefited by the sentence of the Court of First Instance number one of Córdoba.
About two-thirds charged directly
Of these, between 75 and 77 percent charged directly through a refund that Gas Natural made on the invoice, since they “continued to be users”, for which reason they were directly benefited by the resolution of the Provincial Court of Córdoba, which had ratified the judgment of the court in February 2004.
They were amounts of between 180 and 200 euros, sometimes “300-odd”, recalls Santos Urbaneja, which appeared in the “accounts where people had direct debits” of Gas Natural and that “he did not know very well” after a letter that he referred to his clients in which he “did not say why and people assumed it.”
This came after a process of execution of the sentence that was resolved by the Provincial Court before the attitude of the court that did not process the prosecutor’s requests because they were not provided for in the legal system, a situation that changed on December 22, 2014 when the higher court established, through an order, “how are we going to execute this”, which, in his opinion, meant something like that “that day it was the turn of many families to be stoned a little, more than 100,000, because from then on it became possible”.
Dismissal of the appeal before the Supreme Court
After Gas Natural’s dismissal of its appeal before the Supreme Court when the hearing for its resolution was already set, “we can now execute, and we have a period of four years to execute, but here begins the ordeal”, since it must be specify who and how many are affected and how much they have been unduly charged.
Fernando Santos recalled that the Court of Córdoba had to force Gas Natural to provide the data, but the company did so in an “intelligible format” and 104,000 victims could be identified and specified by doing “the accounts one by one” thanks to a computer application that was developed specifically for this cause.
The process that has lasted twenty years and, in the opinion of Fernando Santos Urbaneja, started “because there was sensitivity in Córdoba” when the legal possibility opened up, “completely new”, that “an institution such as the Public Prosecutor’s Office could claim for a multitude of isolated consumers, very little affected economically”.
An uneconomic individual action
For the prosecutor, it is obvious that “no one comes to court for that amount, it doesn’t make any sense, it’s uneconomical, but now, if we add all that amount multiplied by 100, 200 or 300,000, it’s an impressive amount.”
In addition, there were also good institutional relations in Córdoba, where in the Córdoba City Council, the head of the City Council’s Consumer Services, held by Francisco Pedraza, allowed the presentation of fifty claims “for the improper collection of Gas Natural for two concepts” ended up activating the lawsuit.
One of them was a registration right when making the contract and another the so-called ‘IRC’ in the common receiving facility, “which is what we call the gas room”, owned by the community of owners and charged improperly for Natural Gas. to each client.
In order to locate the people who were not customers of Gas Natural, and obtain the data to return the amount improperly collected, which included obtaining the bank account number to make the deposit, the court initiated a process “in a manner that gave credibility and Part of that figure has been obtained from those who have not been a user”, but, on the other hand, there is another that “will not be located”, confesses Santos Urbaneja. EFE