Peninsula All-Media Reporter Sun Guidong Intern Wang Simiao
Fitness card, beauty card, shopping card... More and more prepaid cards are convenient for our lives. While consumers enjoy the convenience brought by prepaid consumption, they also face more problems of "merchant run away", "overlord terms", and "refuse to return", and consumers face many difficulties in protecting their rights. What is the difficulty of prepaid consumption? How should advance payment disputes be resolved? How do consumers protect their legitimate rights and interests? This interviewed these questions.
"bad" fitness card, no way to return the card and transfer it will have to pay
Recently, Ms. Jian, a citizen, told our reporter that she applied for a three-year fitness card at the Lidaweikes Gym in Laoshan in April this year. The total cost of private training classes and sports drinks was more than 17,000 yuan. In September, she wanted to apply for a refund because she was going back to her hometown, but was rejected by the gym. The gym manager told Ms. Jian that according to the provisions of the contract signed when applying for the card, once the fitness card is processed, it will only be transferred but not refunded, and the card transfer fee of 800 yuan is required to pay the gym a transfer fee. Ms. Jian believes that the requirements of the gym are unreasonable and insists on refunding the card and refuses to pay the card transfer fee. The two parties are stalemate. Ms. Yang, who lives in , Jiaozhou City, also encountered a similar situation. Ms. Yang told reporters that on December 4, she paid 4,600 yuan at the wedding photography club of Langong Pavilion, Jiaozhou Wealth Center, and signed up to learn makeup. The club owner, the makeup teacher, promised that there would be no class time limit within 2 months and would teach step by step, including teaching and meeting. After a few days of class, Ms. Yang found that the teacher often played games during class teaching. If you want to ask her questions, you must wait for her to finish playing the game. The teacher only came to the class for 9 days and asked the students to discuss it themselves if they didn't come to teach. She thought the makeup class teacher was irresponsible and asked to withdraw the class or refund the money, but the teacher refused.
Not long ago, our newspaper reported that the Qingdao second-body swimming pool was closed due to the inability to heat, which resulted in the swimming pool members who applied for a membership card being unable to swim normally. Some members requested a refund but were rejected by the operator. The Qingdao branch of Beijing Junnuo Decoration Co., Ltd. ran away. The decoration prepayment paid by the decoration customers and the raw material supplier's prepayment of the decoration materials were all swept away by the company and could not be returned. Over a period of time, many issues such as "difficulty in refunding membership cards" and "easy in paying money are difficult to refund" have attracted the attention of reporters.
Prepaid consumer complaints have increased year by year
In fact, there are many similar problems. According to statistics from Qingdao Consumer Rights Protection Committee, from 2013 to July 2016, the city's "advance payment dispute" mainly focused on five major areas: fitness, beauty and hairdressing, catering, shopping and health care. Among them, fitness accounts for 26% of the total; beauty and hair salon accounts for 22% of the total; catering accounts for 20% of the total; shopping accounts for 15%; health care, photography and decoration industries follow closely.
Ms. Jian said that she used a gym membership card to save money and troubles without having to pay after exercise, but she didn't expect that it would become more troublesome now. Indeed, some consumers often choose to apply for a membership card to pay for their future consumption behavior in advance because they want to enjoy discounts or seek convenience. However, after "prepayment", since the goods or services provided by the operator do not meet the agreed standards, the consumer requests a refund for personal reasons, or other specific circumstances change, the prepaid fees may cause controversy.
Consumer Protection Committee summarized the five major traps of prepaid consumption
Recently, when a reporter interviewed the Qingdao Consumer Rights Protection Committee, he learned that based on the analysis and sorting of prepaid consumption disputes in recent years, they summarized five typical problems.
The first category is poor fulfillment of service commitments. Merchants usually attract consumers with high discounts or discounts. After paying the advance payment, consumers find that the actual goods or services are biased from the merchant’s commitments; secondly, it is easy to pay and difficult to refund. When applying for a membership card, consumers are usually told that "this card has been sold and will not be returned." Such unfair terms put consumers in the face of hindering card refunds.
The most difficult problem for consumers is that the merchant changes ownership or goes bankrupt, the new merchant does not recognize the old card, and some illegal operators themselves use the pretext of advance payment as an excuse to commit fraud; the fourth category is that consumers are unclear about the information on prepayment amount and consumption status, and once a dispute arises, they can only let the consumption status provided by the operator.
Category 5. In most prepayment disputes, the contracts signed by both parties are simple format terms. The merchants use certain regulations to evade their responsibilities, infringe on consumer rights, and are obviously unfair.
Survey: It is the most difficult for operators to deal with
In fact, corresponding measures have been taken against the overlord terms and the behavior of refusing to refund the card. Wang Ying, director of the Consumer Protection Department of Qingdao Municipal Bureau of Industry and Commerce, said that the "Punishment Measures for Infringement of Consumer Rights" promulgated and implemented by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce in 2015 stipulates the handling of "unfair terms". For consumers' reasonable refund requirements, operators must return them within 15 days, and the industrial and commercial department that refuses to return them can punish them. On July 1, 2017, the promulgation and implementation of the newly revised "Shandong Province Consumer Rights Protection Regulations" also clearly restricted behaviors such as "unfair terms" and "refusing to refund cards".
"However, the issue of illegal operators running away is indeed the biggest difficulty in helping consumers protect their rights," said Wang Ying, director of the Consumer Protection Department of Qingdao Industrial and Commercial Bureau. The issuer will run away with money after issuing the card, which is currently a difficult problem for the administrative department.
However, in the process of many years of practice, the industrial and commercial departments have exhausted their best to protect the rights and interests of consumers and achieved certain results. For example, when a branch in Qingdao ran away, a staff member of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce personally went to the company's Beijing headquarters to interview the company and urged it to fulfill its obligations. Finally, the consumer is compensated in the form of a physical discount, which to a certain extent recovered part of the consumer's losses. "
suggestion: third-party supervision of prepaid funds can be carried out
There are many traps, difficult supervision, and many difficulties in protecting rights. So how should prepaid consumption be supervised?
Shanghai Jintiancheng (Qingdao) Law Firm lawyer Zhang Gang said that prepaid consumption often happens when merchants run away, and consumers have many difficulties in protecting their rights. He suggested that you can refer to the " Alipay " model to plan to establish a third-party supervision platform to supervise prepaid payments. Establish A separate prepayment management agency records the amount status of each prepayment in real time, so that both parties to the transaction can view it at any time, protect consumers at a disadvantage, and ensure transaction security.
It is reported that the "Jiangsu Province Consumer Rights Protection Regulations" implemented by Jiangsu Province on July 1, 2017 has issued a series of new regulations on the supervision and management of single-purpose prepaid cards . The regulations stipulate that all industries in the consumer field can issue single-purpose prepaid cards, and the issuing entities are not limited to corporate legal persons. It is also stipulated that , operators must provide guarantees to consumers for the single-purpose prepaid cards issued by them. Suzhou Municipal Bureau of Commerce recommends that a third-party custody mechanism be implemented for prepaid funds. Operators issue cards to open funds custody accounts in commercial banks. Consumers should deposit their prepaid funds directly into the fund custody account, and operators can use prepaid funds. Commercial banks are the guarantors for operators to perform their contracts and must bear the guarantee liability to commercial banks. If the operator is unable to repay goods or services as agreed and cannot refund the money, the commercial bank shall bear the guarantee liability and shall pay the consumer in accordance with the card purchase agreement. Refund. In addition, in the consumption of single-purpose prepaid cards, the information between the two parties to the transaction is seriously asymmetric, and consumers are in a weak position. Therefore, the inversion system of burden of proof can be introduced in the allocation of burden of proof. The operator is responsible for providing relevant evidence such as the sales price of single-purpose prepaid cards, card purchase agreement, redemption records, etc., otherwise they will bear the adverse legal consequences.
lawyer Zhang Gang said that this method of supervising prepaid payments through third-party platforms can effectively protect the rights and interests of consumers. Even if the merchant runs away, it will not cause too much loss to consumers.In addition, market access must be strictly enforced. Departments with regulatory functions must strengthen supervision and management of operators, strengthen market access systems, advocate honest business style, severely crack down on illegal and irregular business behaviors, and stipulate clear punishment procedures for operators who maliciously deceive consumers, include them in the "Black Trust List" and restrict the relevant business activities of the operator. Regulatory departments conduct credit assessments on operating individuals and enterprises regularly, establish a complete credit assessment system, and make public announcements to the whole society.
At the same time, Qingdao Municipal Bureau of Industry and Commerce also recommends that consumers establish a risk awareness during the consumption process, choose enterprises with a long time of establishment and good reputation; be vigilant about goods or services with large discounts and low prices; pay attention to signing a written contract before choosing goods or services; after infringement of legitimate rights and interests, they should actively complain to the industrial and commercial department, believing that the industrial and commercial department is the main force in safeguarding consumer rights and interests.
In addition, Qingdao Municipal Bureau of Industry and Commerce also recommends that operators conduct market assessments and risk expectations before providing prepaid consumption. It is recommended that operators operate honestly and legally and dare to assume responsibilities.
