"The card is still there, and the store is gone!" In order to keep fit in summer, Ou Zhou, who lives in Fengtai District, Beijing, spent 2000 yuan on an annual card at the gym near her home at the beginning of this year. I chose the annual card because the merchant promised to "buy one year and get one year free", but I didn't expect the store to "withdraw" two months later.
All along, the "thunder explosion" of prepaid consumption has frequently appeared in newspapers. Because rights protection is troublesome or costly, most consumers feel unlucky.
Prepaid consumers have many routines.
Feng Nana, who is engaged in the clothing business in Beijing, roughly calculated that there are as many as seven businesses that "run the road" after running their own cards, including beauty salons, gyms, early education institutions that register children, and even a restaurant.
In fact, Feng Nana will "remind" herself before getting the card-try not to do it, but she chooses to do it every time because of the attractive discount of the merchants.
Liu Junhai, a professor at the Law School of Renmin University of China, believes that under ideal circumstances, both buyers and sellers can achieve a win-win situation. For operators, "selling cards" can not only raise funds and expand the scale, but also lock in customers in this way; Consumers can also get some benefits through "getting a card", which directly reduces consumption cost.
However, from the actual situation, especially in the epidemic, prepaid consumption mode has become a tool for some businesses to cut consumers' "leeks".
Chen Yinjiang has studied the prepaid consumption pattern for many years, and found that after consumers pay prepaid cards, merchants have many "routines", some of which will reduce the quality of service and shoddy; There are also merchants who raise prices at will after consumers apply for cards to reduce the number of goods or reduce the frequency of services in disguise; The most common and influential thing is direct bankruptcy or "running away". Not only can consumers not continue to enjoy the service, but it is also difficult to return the remaining money.
China Consumer Rights Protection Annual Report (202 1) issued by China Consumers Association on April 22nd pointed out that prepaid consumer disputes have always been a difficult point in consumer rights protection. 202 1 Affected by the fluctuation of the epidemic situation in COVID-19, it is easy for consumers to pay compensation in the early stage, and the complaints that it is difficult to refund in the later stage have increased significantly year-on-year.
This report shows that due to poor management, businesses default and "run away" when transferring or closing down, and failure to properly handle creditor's rights and debts is one of the main problems leading to prepaid consumption disputes.
"Some businesses close the door and' run the road' is actually planned in advance." I worked as a sales consultant in many gymnasiums in Beijing, revealing that some businesses did close their stores because of poor management, but some businesses had already paved the way when they fooled consumers into doing cards.
Before the struggle, he worked in a gym, which attracted consumers to apply for a card with an ultra-low annual fee of several hundred yuan, but he learned that the venue of the gym was only rented for half a year, and all the equipment came from short rent. In less than half a year, the gym really "ran".
It is urgent to improve relevant laws and regulations.
Whether it is Europe or Feng Nana, the first reaction after encountering a business "running the road" is to protect rights. There are several rights groups in Feng Nana's mobile phone, and no one has sent any new messages.
"At first, everyone was very excited, but with the passage of time and the difficulty of safeguarding rights, people's hearts slowly dispersed." Feng Nana generally feels that it is unlucky for businesses to "run the road" and has not succeeded in defending their rights so far.
Compared with Feng Nana, Ou has a more positive attitude. After learning that the gym was closed, she negotiated with the other party. The gym offered to arrange for her to go to another branch for fitness, but Europe refused because she was far from home. In the end, the two sides agreed that the gym would refund half of the card handling fee.
In Liu Junhai's view, frequent disputes over prepaid consumption patterns and difficulties in safeguarding rights are related to the lack of provisions on prepaid consumption in current laws.
20 12, 1 1 The Administrative Measures for Single Use Commercial Prepaid Cards (Trial) (hereinafter referred to as the "Measures") is the only national prepaid card management regulation in China. However, Liu Junhai pointed out that the "Measures" that have been promulgated for nearly ten years are seriously lagging behind. For example, only corporate legal persons are stipulated.
Chen Yinjiang agreed with this. He pointed out that at present, there is no special law on prepaid consumption in China, and the legal provisions on prepaid consumption are mainly scattered in the Civil Code, the Consumer Protection Law and other laws and regulations. However, these regulations are too principled and fail to standardize the card issuing institutions and behaviors according to the characteristics of prepaid consumption, which leads to the lack of feasibility and timeliness in the process of standardizing prepaid cards and the lack of protection for consumers.
Article 53 of the Law on the Protection of Consumers' Rights and Interests makes relevant provisions on prepaid consumption, stipulating that if an operator provides goods or services in advance, it shall provide them as agreed. If it is not provided in accordance with the agreement, it shall fulfill the agreement or return the advance payment according to the requirements of consumers; And shall bear the interest of the advance payment and the reasonable expenses that the consumer must pay. However, Chen Yinjiang believes that although this provision is based on the basic principles of consumer contracts, it fails to reflect the characteristics of prepaid consumption, so its normative role in prepaid consumption is very limited.
"At present, China's supervision of the prepaid market adopts the mode of separate supervision of single-purpose prepaid cards and multi-purpose prepaid cards." Chen Yinjiang said that the single-purpose commercial prepaid cards most commonly used by consumers are mainly managed according to the Measures, while the multi-purpose commercial prepaid cards such as Shang Tong cards are based on the Opinions on Regulating the Management of Commercial Prepaid Cards jointly formulated by the People's Bank of China and the Ministry of Supervision 20 1 1, which stipulates that the People's Bank of China is mainly responsible for supervising the sales of multi-purpose commercial prepaid cards. However, Chen Yinjiang pointed out that the Opinions did not stipulate corresponding punishment measures, which made the relevant regulations superficial. However, in the Measures, prepaid cards issued by enterprises should be filed with the commercial department within 30 days after issuance, and a certain proportion of funds received in advance should be deposited in commercial banks. Due to the unclear powers and responsibilities of the regulatory authorities, it is also a mere formality. In fact, most enterprises rely on the voluntary self-discipline of card-issuing enterprises to prepare for filing and fund deposit, and it is even more difficult to track and supervise the use of funds.
Establish a supervision system for prepaid consumption.
In order to standardize the prepaid consumption pattern, some places have also enacted legislation.
The Regulations of Shanghai Municipality on the Administration of Single-use Prepaid Consumer Cards, which came into effect on June 65, 438+09+0, stipulates the establishment of the deposit and management system of prepaid card funds, and stipulates the mode of fund supervision, the proportion of fund supervision, the deposit and management of special fund accounts and the mode of fund allocation.
The Regulations of Beijing Municipality on the Administration of Single-use Prepaid Cards (hereinafter referred to as the Regulations), which will come into effect on June 1 this year, set a "seven-day cooling-off period" to solve the problem that consumers cannot return their cards after impulsive consumption. As long as you don't use the card after purchase, you can cancel the contract unconditionally within seven days, and the operator must refund all the prepaid money at one time. In order to deal with some businesses using short rent to "run away" to collect money, the Regulations stipulate that operators who lease other people's venues or counters shall clearly indicate the lease term in the contract, and the use period of single-use prepaid cards shall not exceed the lease term. If the operator is unable to continue to perform the contract due to reasons such as suspension or cancellation, it shall inform the consumer in various ways 30 days in advance and return the balance of the corresponding prepaid expenses in one lump sum according to the original channels.
In many places, the exploration of issuing cards for the record and establishing the deposit management system of funds received in advance has a positive effect on curbing the chaos of prepaid consumption. Chen Yinjiang suggested that special legislation at the national level should be studied and formulated as soon as possible on the basis of learning from local legislation.
"The law should clarify the meaning of prepaid consumption, the qualification of card issuing units, the way of issuing cards, the number and amount of cards issued, and the supervision of funds, so as to provide legal protection for the healthy development of prepaid consumption." Chen Yinjiang believes that considering that prepaid consumption involves market supervision, commerce, public security and other departments, it is easy to lead to regulatory "vacuum" and other issues due to multi-head supervision in practice. Therefore, the law should clarify the scope of powers and responsibilities of various departments, establish a comprehensive and systematic supervision system of prepaid consumption in combination with the characteristics of prepaid consumption, and coordinate with various departments to effectively supervise all fields and links of prepaid consumption. In addition, the security system of prepaid funds should be improved. After filing, operators should deposit the prepaid funds in designated banks or provide third-party guarantees (including commercial insurance), and explore the establishment of an account supervision system of "prepaid consumption mode" to ensure the safety of consumers' prepaid funds.
Liu Junhai agrees with this. He thinks it is necessary to make special legislation in the field of prepaid consumption. Prepaid consumption should be comprehensively and systematically regulated from multiple dimensions such as access conditions, business requirements, behavioral norms, fund supervision, and rights protection relief, and it should be brought into the track of rule of law.
Related Questions and Answers: What is Shang Tong Card? Where can I use it? A: The Shang Tong Card for Beijing Commercial Service Industry is issued and managed by Beijing Shangfutong Network Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Shangfutong), a subsidiary of Beijing Zihexin Holding Group. Beijing Zihexin Tonglian Technology Co., Ltd. provides technical support, and the card is welcomed by merchants and group customers. Shangtongka has established a Shangtongka service network covering supermarkets, restaurants, fitness, physical examination, medical treatment, beauty, etc. 100 large department stores and more than 3,000 merchants. A good service platform has gathered a large number of high-quality group customers. He Zi Xinshangtong Card has opened credit card merchants in more than 20 cities across the country, and its application scope has moved from Beijing to the whole country. The cities that have set up branches are: Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Dalian, Tianjin, Nanjing, Chongqing, Chengdu, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanning, Shenzhen, Haikou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Wuhan, Zhengzhou, Xi 'an, Taiyuan and Shijiazhuang, and the cooperative merchants cover the whole country.