A harsh verdict against Hot Company was recently given in the Small Claims Court in Bat Yam. The judge, Yair Hasdiel, accepted the plaintiff's claims that Hot harassed him with incessant calls even though he asked the representatives to stop calling, and fined the company NIS 19,500 as well as NIS 2,500 in court costs. In a critical and stinging verdict, the judge detailed Hot's conduct in harsh words. According to the statement of claim, for about two weeks, the plaintiff received calls from 18 different Hot representatives, who "persisted in their offers for him to return and consume the Hot services from which he chose to disconnect, and this despite his consistent pleas to be left alone."
Among other things, on one day only - 5/11/23 - the plaintiff was called by six different representatives and some of them even joked about him when he asked them to stop calling. The judge describes the tactics of the representatives: "Listening to the conversations recorded by the plaintiff reveals the full face of Hoot's offensive marketing theory. Among them, among others, the good representative, the bad representative, the spiritual-religious representative who calls the plaintiff a "dear man" and blesses, praises and harnesses the Creator for his needs Hot, the patriotic representative who calls again to inform the claimant of a special operation 'in light of the security situation', the entertainer representative who humiliates the claimant to the sound of his friends' laughter, and the representative who anoints his rudeness with the oil of the sweet Israeli gospel of commercialized familiarity and taunts the claimant using the phrases 'brother', and 'my soul'".
The verdict describes how the company's representatives continue to harass the customer against his will. "There is no rest and no peace for a sinner who wishes to leave the alliance with Hoot," the judge notes, adding that "he is doomed to be subjected to repeated phone calls and repeated interrogations on the grounds of his departure, on the grounds of his failure to respond to previous offers, and on the grounds of his failure to respond to the current offer He will not accept this judgment - his judgment is also contempt, and everything - until he returns to Hot with complete repentance."
The customer explains that "I asked in every possible way with polite words, please stop, I'm not interested in calling you and giving explanations, they laughed at me, made fun of me, talked to me in a manner, I have fifty calls from Hot here where they laugh at me and make fun of me." According to the ruling, the judge accepts the plaintiff's claim that it is harassment and lists a series of previous rulings that dealt with the company's marketing practice, which includes incessant calls.
"The offensive conversations show a systematic, consistent and coordinated conduct, which is organized under the same marketing banner. Many different Hot representatives are involved in the management of these conversations, who identify themselves by different names, and in some of them joins the conversation, or initiates a follow-up conversation, who is presented to the plaintiff as the manager of the representative who made the first contact, And then - in response to his request to stop this, the same manager persists in harassing the plaintiff. In a conversation dated 10.31.23, the 'customer case manager' on behalf of Hot promises the plaintiff that she will 'make sure they don't call you again' if he just listens to her last offer and the very next day the promise turns out to be false." .
The judge rejects Hot's argument that the client previously agreed to be contacted with marketing offers: "There is nothing in the fact alleged in the statement of defense that in the past, by joining its services, the plaintiff gave Hot's consent for her to offer him services, in order to justify her offensive conduct," and adds that "the same exploitation Open, shameless, direct, and dry, which is at the core of that conduct, distilled by one of Hot's representatives in one of the conversations with the prosecutor, as follows: 'I simply receive leads and open conversations', and also - 'I call everyone here, everyone is called a thousand times a day, For everyone who leaves us.'"
He also stated in the verdict that "in this mechanized country, both the commercial fetishism of a person's details and the banality of the harassment were demonstrated - seeing the consumer person as a mere 'next', as a line on a customer list from which only death, or the court, will free him. One that exists in terms of the immortal hot verse: "You can check out any time you like / But you can never leave".
The judge rules in favor of the amount requested by the defendant of NIS 19,500 and adds legal expenses of NIS 2,500 Hot's obligation to pay compensation up to the amount of the compensation ceiling that can be claimed in the small claims court", a much higher amount of NIS 37,700.
Mahout stated in response: "Hot is committed to providing the best service and will continue to do so. The individual case described in the article is unusual, it will be investigated and lessons learned in order to prevent the recurrence of similar cases in the future."