The magazine inquired with the defender of rights, establishing that “people who are not comfortable with the Internet have much difficulty in accessing even to information on their rights”.
MO12345lemonde with AFP
Public services are often unreachable on the phone by users in search of information, according to a survey by the magazine 60 million consumers published Thursday, January 26. “Unfortunately, people who are not comfortable with the Internet have a lot of difficulty in accessing even to information on their rights,” deplored the France-Presse (AFP) agency (AFP) Journalist Lionel Maugain, co -author of the investigation, citing in particular the elderly, precarious or foreign.
As part of this survey conducted with the rights defender, 1,532 calls were made between September 26 and November 10, 2022 by testers representing three types of users needing telephone contact for requests of information or procedures – one person without internet, another having the internet but poorly controlling French, an elderly person with the Internet -, as well as by a lambda caller to reveal possible differences in treatment.
“Disarray”
The donkey cap returns to health insurance. Out of 302 calls made to find out the formalities with a view to obtaining or renewing a vital card, 72 % could not succeed. When you pick up, only 22 % of calls received an “acceptable response” and less than 5 % of “specific responses”. Health insurance has argued in the magazine that the calls received have more than doubled since fall 2019, at 3.2 million per month, and that it struggles to recruit advisers for its telephone platforms.
At the Family Allowance Fund (CAF), 54 % of 408 calls rang in a vacuum. When someone responds, the answers are insufficient or refer to the Internet. Only a minority of agents offers an appointment at the counter or sending a home paper file.
Pôle Emploi takes a little pinning of the game with 84 % of the calls that have resulted, with responses not always satisfactory or lacking in precision. As for the retirement insurance fund, 72 % of the phone calls have resulted but, once again, the responses on the possible retirement age were not relevant in the vast majority of cases.
“The solutions exist but they are very rarely proposed, which plunges users into disarray and can go as far as renunciation of their rights,” notes Lionel Maugain. While the dematerialization of public services is accelerating, 60 million consumers claims, with the defender of rights, a law imposing several modes of access, in particular by the establishment of a local window bringing together a representative of each organization.
The results of this survey hardly mark progress compared to that carried out in 2016, except that the calls are no longer overcharged and there is no longer any notable discrimination linked to the origin users.