LEGAL DECEPTIONS
KRZYSZTOF CZABAŃSKI
Media inform about perfidious ways of deceiving elderly and helpless people. There are many such cases. I think it is high time suitable state institutions looked at this problem. Certainly, is criminals deceive – let me name them as – the private ones, wheedling money for a grandson or using a different method, using hatred and generosity of elderly people, it is enough when police, procurators and courts are dealing with such bad people. However, the matter is getting more complicated when criminals come to action – their name – somehow the official one, in ‘white collars’.
They come to houses or call and on the phone, they persuade, for example, to buy an subscription, insurance, cable TV, telecom services. They give contracts with various references written in little print to sign, or they send a messenger with such contracts, who is always in hurry and urges people to give their signatures. An elderly person gives in to pressure – and signs a contract somehow blindly. Only when a bill of a few hundred zlotys comes and a permanent monthly fee of hundred zlotys for two or three years, the person knows that she/he has been deceived. But the person pays because she/he feels helpless. Otherwise, if she/he does not pay, a debt collection company or a bailiff would chase her/him.
But why does it work only in one direction – only for the sake of deceiving companies? Why isn’t the state on the side of deceived people? After all, there are state offices of a consumer’s protection ,there are prosecutors whose task is to guard the rule of law in Poland. And it is beyond any doubt that wheeling contracts from elderly, helpless people, is a planned deception from the very beginning. It is proved not only by this forcing rush of signing contracts but also there are often misleading names, which are different only in a letter or one word from honest names of big companies. So, wouldn’t the saving from this kind of deception be easy for a good procurator?
We have a right to assume that legal companies existing in the market are functioning in the legal way. Certainly, everyone has his own reason and should maintain good skepticism towards the so-called occasions which are offered by various salesmen. However, I would feel better if I knew that for signing an unbeneficial contract by an elderly and helpless person, the law will chase somebody who deceived, not somebody who fell a victim. Even if everything took place according to the law.
Anyway, it is also worth changing the law, in order to prevent the bloom of ‘legal deceptions’.
(AA)
"Niedziela" 15/2014