Is Mondo Convenienza inconvenient for customers and employees?
Antitrust officials and the GdF carried out an inspection at the headquarters of the Iris Mobili company which owns the Mondo Convenienza brand. Meanwhile in Florence logistics workers continue to report exploitation
Kitchens for less than six hundred euros despite including branded appliances, bedrooms for under a thousand. Smoke in the eyes for Italian furniture factories and an obligatory weekend stop for millions of people: young people looking for furniture for their away student apartment, young couples who are moving in together, but also owners who intend to rent out their furnished properties. “Our strength is the price”, reads the slogan of Mondo Convenienza. And the prices are actually unattainable. But… at what price?
THE ANTITRUST INVESTIGATES ON MONDO CONVENIENZA
The Competition and Market Guarantor Authority intends to understand this by launching an investigation against Iris Mobili Srl, owner of the Mondo Convenienza brand, for illicit conduct during the delivery and assembly phases of the furniture and also in the after-sales services. Interestingly, the Group's website cannot be visited at this time.
According to the Authority, the company Iris Mobili, owner of the brand, delivers defective, damaged, non-compliant and non-compliant products with consumers' orders. Furthermore, there would be shortcomings in after-sales assistance and in the provision of the guarantee of conformity.
“From the many reports received from consumers – we read on the Agcm website – it emerges that the company would deliver products that are non-compliant, defective, damaged, do not correspond to the purchase order, with missing pieces or of incorrect measurements. In other cases the products would not be assembled correctly, thus preventing their normal use".
Furthermore, the company – in response to consumer complaints about these problems – would not have provided timely and adequate after-sales assistance for their solution and would have hindered the provision of the guarantee of conformity. For this reason, today the Authority's officials carried out an inspection in the administrative headquarters of the company Iris Mobili Srl with the help of the Special Antitrust Unit of the Guardia di Finanza.
THE ATTACK BY CONSUMERS
The National Consumers Union also intervened in the matter. «Well, let's clarify things immediately – says president Massimo Dona -. The product must always conform to that requested by the consumer and it is essential that the buyer is promptly assisted in the event of defects or problems." «The rights on the guarantee of conformity are sacrosanct – he adds – and cannot be hindered in any way, perhaps with various excuses and by scrambling».
EXPLOITATION AND MASSACRING SHIFT: THE DISPUTE
In the last period there has been talk of Mondo Convenienza especially with reference to the demonstration in Campi Bisenzio, in the province of Florence, which began on 30 May and which sees, as Avvenire writes, "about forty porters and assemblers from the companies that provide this service to the company of the Carosi family, led by Cobas, ask for the application of the national logistics contract, denouncing exploitation, exhausting shifts and violation of safety regulations".
THE COBAS COMPLAINT
The lack of the national Multiservice contract is also felt at a salary level, with differences in the paycheck of around 500 euros gross per month. But for the logistics workers that is not the biggest problem given that, the Cobas report, they have to deal with work shifts ranging from 10 to 14 hours a day, from Monday to Saturday, without any type of safety during the assembly and disassembly. Hence the request for correctly paid overtime, the right to holidays and sick leave as per the contract.
“Mondo Convenienza is the symbol of the arrogance of companies that feel and act above everything and everyone, even the laws. Mondo Convenienza is the emblem of the poor work of many that generates billions in turnover for a few. The workers of Campi Bisenzio are giving everything to defeat this system supported by an entire territory, to make the minimum wage "from below" which the Italian parliament does not want to make", declared Si Cobas .
At the beginning of September there was a demonstration organized in front of the Campi Bisenzio shopping center which culminated in scuffles with the police who prevented the demonstrators from entering the market. And it didn't go any better at the key event of the national table on Friday 15 September: "it's not simply disappointing, it's downright offensive", the comment from Si Cobas Firenze which underlines how the answers given are a "scam".
“The Cobas, as we know, are big shots – says Avvenire -, but in the meantime the public prosecutor's office of Bologna has investigated the managers of Mondo Convenienza for exploitation and another investigation is underway in Ivrea”. And now the Agcm also wants to understand whose convenience it really is in Mondo Convenienza.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/mondo-convenienza-e-sconveniente-per-clienti-e-dipendenti/ on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 11:03:56 +0000.