FAC-You: Spain's worst companies

The Spanish equivalent of the Consumers' Association is an organisation called FACUA. It would be interesting to know if FACUA has contracts with any of the leading mobile operators, as they are all nominated as worst company of the year and get dishonourable mentions in the two other main categories of the organisation's newly instituted annual "awards", worst business practice and worst advert.

This is cracking stuff and is evidence of growing consumerist muscle in Mallorca and Spain. Our chums Ryanair have been on the receiving end of various groups' criticisms - and the airline is also nominated as one of the five worst companies, along with Air Comet - while Palma town hall has recently become the first local authority to start proceedings against a whole host of mobile operators, including the "big three" nominated by FACUA - Orange, Vodafone and Movistar - for what it claims are "abusive clauses" relating to their contracts and practices. Movistar has also recently been fined, albeit with a low penalty, for some misdemeanour.

FACUA is inviting consumers to vote for one of the five nominees in its three categories. One presumes that there is unlikely to be an awards ceremony, replete with gushing recipients, thanking God and their entire family or sending their fridge. There will be no separate appraisal of the fashion sense of the recipients as there was for the BAFTAs (sponsored of course by Orange) in "The Sunday Times", an article that brought forth a brilliant comment on the paper's website to the effect of who are all these people (mentioned in the article) and why am I reading the article, one that was outstanding in its fatuity and references to obscure fashionistas. Shame that there might not be such an appraisal, certainly where one of the nominees of worst advert is concerned - the wonderfully named bread company, Bimbo.

Among the categories of worst business practice are "irregularities in electricity invoices" - no prizes for knowing which company might be the happy recipient of this turkey or rotten tomato - and telephonic "spam", for which, take a bow, Movistar (aka Telefonica) and its miserable, puerile and counterproductive mobile bombardment with the "1485" number. Spam or cold-calling is not the problem that it is in the UK, and is generally confined to the whole telecoms sector - mobile, landlines and internet providers. FACUA might also have fingered these providers. They are part of an industry, internet provision, that is one of the worst in Europe. Slow, expensive and unreliable. Other than this, it's quite good. At a time when it has just been reported that your average Spaniard spends longer on the internet than watching television, it beggars belief just how lousy broadband can be.

If FACUA succeeds in shaming the mobile (and internet) operators into sharpening up their acts, becoming less "abusive", becoming more service-oriented, then it will have done well. Whether it does is of course another matter.

To vote on the worst companies, the worst business practices and the worst adverts, go to http://facua.org/lapeorempresa. Acknowledgement is due to the article in yesterday's "Diario".


QUIZ - Yesterday: National Lampoon threatened to kill the dog, as you can see.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.