In Spain, a company is in full expansion. The French Hubside opened its fifth store in Madrid last November, in the Plaza Norte 2 Shopping Center in San Sebastián de los Reyes. Hubside.Store is also present in Barcelona, Alicante, Murcia, Zaragoza and Vigo; the next openings will be in Oviedo and Seville. It is possible that the name of Hubside will be heard more and more, also that of Celside, another company that is part of the same group and that has a large number of claims behind it.
Hipertextual reported in a previous article about the problems of users who have contracted the services of this company. They did it with Celside's electronic device insurance service. In Fnac stores, with the purchase of a device, they offer this insurance in cases of theft or loss.
However, with the signing of that contract, an extra product is included: a website creation and cloud storage service from the sister company, Hubside. This service is offered with the hook that it is free for 30 days and that it does not imply an extra expense for the client. The result is that part of the clients are not duly informed about this service; the other party tries to cancel before the deadline but runs into unresponsive customer support or excuses a server crash. In the end, they end up paying for a service that they have not requested and that to cancel it is an odyssey.
It doesn't only happen at Fnac, but also at some Xiaomi and K-Tuin stores. Many affected customers have explained their experiences with Hubside and Celside (companies that are part of the French SFAM) on Twitter, especially for purchasing insurance at Fnac; Claims have also been filed with the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU). Meanwhile, the expansion plans are going from strength to strength for Hubside's physical stores in Spain, and that is where many of the problems are now concentrated.
The key is in the Hubside contracts
An employee of the company explains to Hipertextual how this company works inside. He does so on condition of anonymity so that his statements do not have negative reprisals for him. In an interview with this medium, he clarifies that Hubside products are not a scam and that they really exist, although the only objective of the sellers of these stores is to get customers to sign four different contracts. And they get it.
Hubside.store is described as a place to buy and rent electronic devices. Specialist in reconditioned products that also have other additional services. “We are seeing how the market for refurbished devices is growing more and more in Spain, especially in the mobile phone sector, and that means that Spaniards are increasingly more environmentally aware. For this reason, in our stores we offer users 60% refurbished devices and 40% new phones,” said Sadri Fegaier, CEO of Hubside, in a statement.
The reality is that the product that is in the store is not sold, such as a refurbished electronic device; everything is focused on contract services. “When we get the client to sign, he signs four contracts at once,” explains the anonymous worker. The hook is that they have 30 days free to cancel the service. As in the case of insurance offered by stores like Fnac, getting it is an odyssey.
Each contract has a different price and in each one there are also small letters that increase the final price of the product even more . “People have come to say that they have received almost all of their pension for these contracts,” he recalls. In total there are 4 contracts and the internal source confirms that the fifth will soon begin to be offered. If a client signs all the contracts he can get to pay more than 300 euros per month . “Each service has a price but then there are clauses that raise the price,” she explains.
Until now, the strategy that Huside.Store has used to make itself known is to give away a Powerbank, a portable battery, to attract potential customers. They arrive at the physical store with the flyer in which they promise that gift and that is what they use as a hook to offer the other services.
Hubside.Store services We commented that there are four services. First, mobile device insurance. Then, the web storage service (which is also included in the sale of insurance with Fnac). The company also offers a loyalty club, called Reward Club, with discounts in stores such as Fnac and AliExpress, as well as refunds of part of the amount of certain purchases such as smartphones. Fourth, mobile device rental.
In the catalog they offer up to 100 products, such as mobile phones, consoles or scooters. However, the worker affirms that the store has very few available. Finally, Hubside.Store plans to integrate a fifth contract, based on a customizable VIPS events service that is not yet available to customers.
The internal source confirms that in most cases, clients end up signing all four contracts at the same time. “It is claim after claim”, he points out. Since he has been working at Hubside.Store, the internal source who has spoken with this medium has seen how some of his colleagues have left the job due to moral issues . It is not an easy decision due to the good working conditions offered by the French company.
Those affected increase every day and up to a Telegram group has been created with 205 members and affected by the practices of the French group. People who have had problems after buying a product in stores like Fnac and Xiaomi are mixed in the conversations; also those who have contracted services without knowing it in Hubside.Store.
“They told me they would call me but they never called me”, says AA He asks for help and doesn't know what he can do to cancel the services. In general, all the messages show a customer service that drags but, above all, a lot of frustration for having “bitten” and signing contracts without being aware of the consequences.
Telegram Group Affected Hubside /SFAM
The 'too' good conditions
In each Hubside.Store store that has been opened in Spain there are about 8 salespeople and a manager who manages the activities of the premises. Each seller receives a salary of about 20,000 euros per year, and the commissions for each signing of the contract are separate. The worker affirms that some vendors have come to earn more than 2,000 euros a month. In the case of store managers, the salary is even higher. Not only do they have a good salary; also a health insurance both for them and their family, life and dental insurance . “In addition, they pay us for food every day, they give us a restaurant ticket to spend about 250 euros a month,” he reports. All employees start with a trial month and then sign a permanent contract.
High salaries come accompanied by great pressure. Hubside's internal source has worked for years in sales and customer service and has never been under such high pressure as at the French company. “They talk to you all day, even on holidays, and it is very difficult to disconnect“.
This pressure begins in the training that each new member of the company receives. Before joining the Hubside stores in Spain, sellers receive training for 10 days. They are carried out at the company's headquarters in Barcelona, where they have offices in the Mapfre Tower in Barcelona. The training is based on teaching tools to try to sell as much as possible, explains the company worker, and techniques to turn the situation around. They teach them to appeal to emotions to try to convince the clients and “they teach us to see them in the form of a bill, not as people,” says the internal source.
“It gives the feeling that they want to buy your morale with high wages and conditions.”
Anonymous Hubside.Store worker Some workers have left the company after witnessing the wave of complaints about the contracts signed by clients. Others, however, cannot do without the salary offered by Hubside. The anonymous worker adds that, in addition to the sales practices and the high number of complaints, the handling of money by the company is also striking. In addition to salaries much higher than the average, he remembers other details such as training. “They last about 10 days and they pay us for the AVE, the hotel and meals for all those days. They tell us that money is not the problem“.
A company with many problems in France
SFAM Headquarters (LinkedIn) Hubside.Store's sister company is Celside, the insurance for mobile devices that stores like Fnac offer to customers. The two are part of SFAM Group, now Indexia Group, which is one of the shareholders of Fnac.
The objective of the company, born in France, was to diversify and began to offer other services such as the creation of websites, loyalty programs and recycling of multimedia products. The same services that try to sneak customers into Hubside.Store.
SFAM was fined 10 million euros in France
The string of claims has had consequences in France. The French Competition and Consumer Affairs Directorate fined SFAM in 2019 of 10 million euros. The company had to refund all charges that had not been accepted by customers.
In addition to the unjustified invoices, the French body also recognized misleading practices to consumers and a lack of information on purpose to increase subscriptions.
However, the company continues to expand in Spain. “Hubside.Store also foresees the creation of 150 direct jobs with the planned growth in Spain. A growth strategy that also includes the opening of stores in Portugal, with the first establishment inaugurated a few weeks ago”, summarizes an article published in late 2021. Company continues to open stores as claims mount.
The problem is still with the insurance
Fnac continues to collect the most complaints on social networks, although Celside insurance is also offered in other stores such as Xiaomi and K-Tuin. Jesús C. is one of the many people who had a bad experience in the Xiaomi store on Calle Larios in Malaga. In his case, he went to buy some headphones and “I left with three insurances, of which only one had been mentioned to me” , he explains to this medium.
The hook for Jesus to end up signing the contracts was that if he contracted the insurance then he could cancel it as soon as he left the store and he would receive a 50% refund of his purchase. “He began to take out papers for me to sign, commenting to me that it was only data protection issues. And he was going through them super fast,” he recalls. It was the next day that he realized that he had hired three different services. “Emails began to arrive from Celside, Hubside and another one that was like a cloud service.” Jesús affirms that at no time was the specific conditions of the contracts explained to him.
He quickly called the companies to cancel the services. “They treated me badly, I spent 30 minutes on the phone arguing until they processed my discharge,” says the Xiaomi client. The problem, in the end, was resolved and she avoided being charged the price of a service that she had not ordered. But many others do not realize it until the charge arrives on their account. Jesús C. denounces, above all, the way in which He was sold the services of Celside and Hubside in the Xiaomi store, and describes him as “of dubious morals”.
“I dedicate myself to programming, I am quite involved in internet issues, and I do not usually fall for this type of scam. If I ate it and it was hard for me to unsubscribe, I do not want to imagine an older person or someone else outside this kind of things. They literally put a thousand pages in my face to sign them very quickly without being able to read them and rushing so I couldn't react”.
Jesús C., Xiaomi customer Also on K-Tuin (but less ) Celside locks are not in all Xiaomi stores. In the end, each store operates as a franchise and it is each store manager who decides what insurance to offer. Xiaomi confirmed to Hipertextual that the collaboration with Celside continues, but in few stores, and that they have other insurance for devices such as the one in Zurich.
K-Tuin also has claims for the same issue. In fact, a Twitter account, @estafafnac”, is responsible for compiling many of the cases in the hope that these practices will stop.
Hipertextual has contacted K-Tuin. Compared to Fnac, it receives fewer claims for Celside's insurance, because it offers it to a lesser extent. K-Tuin stated that they have 1.3% of incidents related to the French company and that 100% of these are resolved. Unlike other stores that offer insurance, at K-Tuin the customer service department is in charge of managing the complaint and canceling the insurance if that is what the customer requests. “In the process of registering the service, we always specify what the client is activating. In the case of Hubside for example (as we have discussed), in case of being registered, we explain it by itself,” said K- Tuin to this medium.
Hubside.Store responds
Hipertextual has contacted Hubside.Store about the problems surrounding the company. In the previous article published by this medium, the company explained that the subscription process “rigorous and is supervised daily by our partners. Through them, we ensure that customers receive the information clear and complete, as well as quality advice adapted to your needs. Subscriptions are only contracted with the prior and signed agreement of the client”.
Hipertextual has contacted the company again and asked about the complaints from Hubside.Store customers. In this regard, the company states that it has set up rigorously supervised sales processes, and “our teams of trainers control and guarantee the quality of the service and advice provided in our stores and in the local of our partners.”
“Any sale of our services that does not comply with the group's quality criteria and processes is prohibited and non-compliance with these principles will result in sanctions.”
Hubside.Store Likewise, Hubside.Store informs this medium by email that it works daily to improve its sales processes and the customer experience. To do this, they have created a satisfaction barometer, as well as periodic surveys, quality controllers and a follow-up of complaints per store. He states that the rate remains below 1% of the total. In addition, it adds that the control and improvement points have allowed the company to carry out 2,600 satisfaction surveys in 2021, in 80 stores and more than 400,000 sales, which have revealed an index
customer satisfaction rate of 98%.
Hubside.Store also reminds that customers have 30 days (“double the term imposed by law”), to test their services and cancel by calling, sending an email or writing a letter. However, in the response they do not refer to the multitude of complaints on social networks and through organizations such as the OCU in which hundreds of clients denounce insufficient customer service.
Expansion does not stopHubside.Store explains to Hipertextual that the store brings together the know-how of the group, which focuses on the design and distribution of products and services dedicated to telephony, multimedia and the web (insurance, multimedia rental, repair and recycling , creation of websites, sale of refurbished multimedia products, etc.).
The company does not give details about the origin of its investors. It maintains that in 2021 it has reached “no less than 400,000 new clients in Europe and has hired 400 new employees in Spain to strengthen its teams and support the growth of the group in the country in order to better meet the needs of its customers”.
Meanwhile, they continue to expand. The brand plans to continue its development in Europe and Spain, with the opening of more than 1,000 permanent positions in Europe, including 500 in Spain, and the opening of 30 new stores in Spain and Portugal.
Meanwhile, complaints from affected customers seem to be on the rise on social networks.
