Customs earlier received a report from a member of the public that a staff member of a fitness centre chain in a Ngau Tau Kok Amoy Shopping Centre was suspected of using false product descriptions, selling memberships with bad business practices, and exerting undue influence on customers in an intimidating manner sales tactics, forcing customers to buy fitness memberships, violating the Trade Descriptions Ordinance.
A 21-year-old girl was intimidated to buy a 12,000 yuan membership in September last year. Customs today arrested a 32-year-old female employee involved in the case.
Customs arrests a female employee of a fitness center chain for allegedly violating the Trade Descriptions Ordinance (Photo by Yang Jialong)
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Liu Zhizhong, commander of the second unit of the Customs Unscrupulous Business Practices investigation, said that the female victim is 21 years old and a working person.
She purchased the membership of the chain fitness center involved in the case in March last year. After she worked out in September of the same year, the female employee involved in the case sold her a permanent membership plan of about 20,000 yuan. After she expressed no interest in buying it, the female employee said that she could share 130 memberships. Monthly installment payment to upgrade membership, monthly contribution of more than 100 yuan, so she agreed to buy.
However, the female victim later found out that the female employee used her credit card to charge the entire fee in a one-time payment method. She immediately requested to cancel the transaction, but the other party said that she had upgraded her membership. Cancelling the transaction would invalidate the original membership at the same time, intimidating the victim to continue. Payment.
Since the female victim has a large number of fitness coaching courses in the center that have not been used for a month, in order to avoid small losses, the only way to pay is to pay according to the female staff's instructions.
First falsely claim that preferential payment methods are available and then intimidate the victim
The entire sales process took more than three hours, during which the victim's credit card balance was insufficient. The female staff instructed other store staff to accompany the female victim to the nearest credit card center to apply for a ready-to-use credit card, but the credit limit was still unable to pay the fee in full. The plan was changed to a 40-month fitness membership worth 12,000 yuan, and the victim paid the fee with two credit cards and bank deposits.
Liu Zhizhong pointed out that the female employee involved in the case first falsely claimed that preferential payment methods could be used to make the victim agree to purchase a fitness membership, wait for the victim to find out the abnormality, and then threatened the victim that cancellation would make the original membership invalid. This time, I made an inappropriate proposal, and in a situation of extreme anxiety and helplessness, I finally could not bear the pressure to give in, sign the relevant contract and pay the fee.