Indexia, owner of the Hubside shops, in court
The Hubside store, located 44 place de la République – Photo: Grégoire Gindre
The insurer Indexia Group, ex-SFAM, and owner of the Hubside.Store franchise, some of whose stores are located in Lyon, is summoned before the Paris Criminal Court for “misleading business practices“. In the past, in 2019, the company has already been fined 10 million.
Last March, Lyon Capital city State in its columns of the accusations of fraud brought against the franchise Hubside, property of the SFAM. Place de la République, Part-Dieu, Caluire-et-Cuire, these ultra-modern style stores with storefronts were already the target of the repression of fraud. State-of-the-art smartphones, electric scooters and the latest generation laptops, the windows are eye-catching. Only, the reality behind these shops is quite different: the sale of all types of multimedia objects, the subscription to insurance sometimes signed too quickly by customers.
“Misleading commercial practices“
According to our colleagues from CMR infothe insurer Indexia Group, owner of the Hubside stores, is summoned before the Paris Criminal Court for “misleading business practices“. Indeed, the repression of fraud has determined enough elements for the Paris prosecutor’s office to consider that the case is judged.
In question: the difficulty of resilience of insurance contracts which amount to several hundred euros per month for certain customers. By making these subscriptions, in addition to a fixed income, the sellers in the shop received a variable salary “up to 4,500 euros“, we explained an ex-employee. Sometimes with insistence, sometimes thanks to a linguistic pirouette, or once again in “stirring the brain”the salesman almost always managed to get his client to sign illegible assurances.
Read also: Lyon: the Hubside brand in the crosshairs of the repression of fraud
A company already known to justice
However, Indexia Group is not at its first attempt. At the head of the Hubside brand, Sadri Fegaier, 58th richest man in France. With a fortune estimated at 1.8 billion euros by the magazine Challenges, the Drômois, who grew up in Romans-sur-Isère, made the headlines of the local media in 2018, when he became the second shareholder of the Fnac-Darty group. . The 42-year-old man is also and above all CEO and founder of Sfam, which has become Indexia Group, a multimedia insurance brokerage company.
It is for this last element that the billionaire made himself known in June 2019. His company, Sfam, was sentenced to an administrative penalty of 10 million euros in fines for “misleading commercial practices” by the Paris prosecutor’s office. Sfam offered discounts of 30 euros on purchases of multimedia products made in Fnac stores, in exchange for subscribing to a contract, which is difficult to cancel. Faced with this condemnation, Fnac stopped all collaboration with Sfam. “At the time, the Fnac-Darty group […] lost too much in terms of images. For the client, it was a Fnac employee who was in front of him so the company was guilty“, Explains a source familiar with the matter to justify the end of the partnership between the two giants of the sector. The holding company of the billionaire CEO then created the Hubside.Store stores in France, then in Europe. The circle is complete for the brand.
However, she has already been referred to the Paris Criminal Court, again for “misleading commercial practices”. Case to follow.