Zhang Yang

    nicolezyyy@163.com

    FOURTEEN seafood restaurants that ripped off customers with rigged scales were named by the Shenzhen Consumer Council during a press conference yesterday, and their records were submitted to the city’s public credit center.

    Seven of these seafood restaurants are located in Dapeng New Area, while the others are based in Longgang District. They were found to be ripping off customers by remotely controlling their electronic scales. Each restaurant was fined 20,000 yuan (US$2,941) and a record of their dishonesty was put on file at the city’s public credit center.

    According to Liu Long, secretary general of Dapeng’s consumer council, the market supervision bureau in Dapeng New Area investigated 52 cases involving rigged scales at seafood shops and restaurants last year, which was six times the number of similar cases in 2015.

    The city’s consumer council also named Barbie International Hairdressing Salon in Futian District that had closed its doors last year, leaving customers with unused prepaid cards. The council received 92 complaints against the salon as it had failed to return prepayments totaling up to 200,000 yuan to customers.

    “The salon’s legal representative was cooperative in the beginning, when the council requested that the salon give refunds to its customers, but half a year later he became unreachable,” said Li Yangyong, deputy secretary general of Futian’s consumer council.

    A Shenzhen technology company using the same name as Alibaba’s Ant Financial was also named by the council yesterday. A total of 17 complaints have been filed to the council against the company by customers.

    The company was involved in online pyramid selling and solicited customers via its phone app and WeChat account by claiming that it had received investment from Alibaba. Customers were offered VIP memberships for buying 3,000-yuan refueling cards from the company, and they were given financial rewards for introducing new customers to the company.

    According to the council, the police have detained several suspects from the company. Both the company and the hairdressing salon’s dishonest actions were also recorded on the city’s public credit center by the council.