Address Book Publishers

UWG, Advertising Law and Competition Law

Many companies struggle with unfair advertising methods and unsolicited sending of offers disguised as invoices.

Address book publishers, in particular, repeatedly try to make quick money by attempting to associate themselves with reputable providers, such as the “Yellow Pages”. Other publishers try to appear like an official inquiry from the trade office through their naming. If such a form, with which one actually only wants to correct often incorrect information, is returned, a contract is formed if one reads the fine print more carefully and it would be effective.

Time and again, there are widespread campaigns in which thousands of companies, but also non-profit organizations and freelancers are contacted. Unfortunately, even today, many addressees still respond believing they are clearing up their registration in official registers free of charge. Instead, after a few weeks, they received an invoice for several hundred EUROS.

Often, payment is then made – for an entry that was ultimately often not desired.

Collection Agency in Case of Non-Payment

Those who do not pay regularly receive mail from a collection agency. The collection agency then likes to refer to alleged or actual court judgments from which the alleged payment obligation is supposed to arise. The judgments often do actually exist. How they were obtained, how in particular the respective defendants defended themselves, always remains unclear. In any case, such judgments are by no means representative of the question of whether returning a specific form with, for example, entry corrections actually establishes a payment obligation.

Judgments that deny this are regularly not mentioned – understandable from the perspective of the publishers or collection companies. Such judgments often state that the alleged contract declaration can be contested due to fraudulent misrepresentation in not a few cases. Then the contract, if it was even effectively concluded at all, is to be considered invalid from the beginning. There is no payment obligation in such a case.

There are often good arguments why a payment obligation is not established by returning “entry forms”, but can at least be nullified by contestation due to fraudulent misrepresentation. Therefore, a payment obligation can often hardly be enforced in court.