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At 10 a.m. on June 26, Ms. Sheng, a citizen, finally received a prompt from "Fliggy": the merchant had sent a signature. At this time, 58 days have passed since she placed an order for visa business, but according to the package taken by Ms. Sheng in this "Shanghai CYTS Travel Agency franchise store", the promised processing time is only "about 9 working days".
In recent days, with the peak of summer outbound travel approaching, the demand for visa processing by residents of Shencheng City has surged. In addition to saving time and worry, tourist visas for Japan, South Korea and other countries must be handled by travel agencies. However, under the heat, doubts have also begun to emerge: in various platforms for help, travel agencies have added to the chaos of many citizens' travel plans.
The timing of the issuance of visas has been repeatedly delayedSince I had already decided to travel to Japan with my mother, finding a travel agency to apply for a visa was the first step in traveling. On the Fliggy platform, the "Shanghai CYTS Travel Agency Franchise Store" attracted Ms. Sheng's attention: in terms of its Japanese visa agency products, it has high monthly sales, a wide variety of packages, a 99.5% visa issuance rate, and a relevant evaluation of 4.9 points. After some comparison, Ms. Sheng placed an order online on May 4 and chose to apply for the "three-year multiple-entry tourist visa VIP simplified expedited" package with a higher unit price in the store.
According to the relevant introduction page, the package is handled one-on-one by experts, and the required material items are reduced by 6 items compared with "regular processing", and it only takes about 9 working days to be issued. Therefore, in addition to the visa fee, the package fee also includes the merchant service fee, simplified processing fee, and VIP rush fee. In order to sign on time and be worry-free and reliable, Ms. Sheng was willing to "pay" for it, but after placing the order, her experience was contrary to the promotional content.
"On June 6th, I prepared all the materials according to the prompts and mailed them to the address specified by the merchant, and after the materials were signed on June 7, the customer service began to pull back and forth with me." Ms. Sheng recalled, "At first, I simply told me that I could not do it according to my situation, and then I asked repeatedly before asking me to supplement the materials. According to the customer service, she also needs to submit proof such as the ticket itinerary and the freshly stamped business license. Although these materials were not in the list of packages, Ms. Sheng still mailed them to the travel agency on June 14, but at this time, with the booming business and the price of the product, the customer service once again put forward a new request: if you want to continue processing, you need to make up the difference of 450 yuan per person.
Ms. Sheng's application progress shows that the merchant only delivered the visa on June 26.
"Isn't this a sitting price?" Ms. Sheng did not agree with this, but if she did not make up the price, the travel agency would not review or send the signature. At the end of June, after the desperate Ms. Sheng asked "12345" for help, Ms. Sheng's visa application finally progressed through the coordination of the Shanghai Consumer Protection Commission.
Although Ms. Sheng's plight has broken through, many citizens are not so lucky. In fact, in the past month, the visa business of this "Shanghai CYTS" has frequently caused controversy. For example, netizen Ms. Nian told reporters that she mailed materials to apply for a Japanese visa on May 28, and only after the agreed 10 working days had passed, did she learn from customer service that the travel agency had not begun to review the materials at all, "I originally planned to travel on June 18, but it was too late to change the ticket hotel." "Netizen Ms. Fei, in the process of applying for the Thai electronic visa on arrival, was asked to submit the materials that were not specified in the list three times, and finally failed to sign in the "layer by layer"...
The team is rudimentary, the charges are unknown, and the service is emptyOn the afternoon of June 30, the reporter found the location of this travel agency according to the mailing address of the materials obtained by Ms. Sheng from the merchant. It was not yet time to leave work, but there was no one at the front desk, so I walked straight inside, and the reporter found the "Visa Department" in charge of visa business. On the desk, materials such as copies of customers' ID cards are stacked with stacks, and on the floor are two large boxes stuffed with bags of delivery materials that have been opened. However, only two staff members are active in the entire Visa Department.
Shanghai CYTS Travel Agency offline office, no one at the front desk.
"We're not going to be out here." One of the staff members said that if you want to order visa packages, consult visa business or report problems, you need to find customer service personnel through online channels such as Taobao and Fliggy. In fact, Ms. Sheng also mentioned in the process of sharing her experience that after the agency encountered obstacles, she also tried to call the landline of the above-mentioned Shanghai office directly, but no one answered, "The only online customer service that can reflect the problem does not seem to understand the situation of each customer, and will only tell me to 'wait patiently' and 'help you urge'." Whether it's feedback questions or inquiries about progress, it's hard to get a substantive response. In this offline office location, the reporter did not find the customer service staff who were working.
The customer service staff said that communication can only be carried out through online consultation.
Through the inquiry of relevant websites, the reporter learned that the full name of this CYTS travel agency is "CYTS Aoyou International Tourism Co., Ltd.", which has multiple branches in China, and its visa processing business covers almost all popular destinations in the world. On the product page, the corresponding packages are marked with exciting labels such as "premium", "simplified" and "expedited", but a closer look reveals that these services have a lot of "tricks" in terms of fees.
Taking the Japanese visa agency business as an example, the fees vary according to the visa delivery area, visa validity period, number of entries, application materials, processing time, etc., but the gap between the packages of the same type of visa is not large. For example, Ms. Sheng's three-year "VIP simplified expedited" package is almost the same as the materials required for the two packages of "on-the-job simplification" and "tax simplification", according to customer service, the VIP simplified expedited package "only shortens the processing time by 1 working day", but its price difference is 200 to 300 yuan. In addition, from the actual experience of consumers, the application materials have been supplemented again and again, and the time for issuing visas has been repeatedly delayed, which is obviously far from the promised additional services.
The customer service said that the 899 package is only faster than other packages.
The reporter also found on multiple product pages that although the "package description" given by the merchant contained a description of the fee, it did not seem to correspond to the final charge. For example, the "first application" package of the Dutch tourist visa costs 588 yuan, but the fee description shows "1000 yuan for the trip within 10 days"; Vietnam single-entry visa "landing approval" package costs 129 yuan, and the fee description prompts "3-job approval 1000 yuan". When asking customer service, you can only get a list of application materials for the corresponding package, which makes many consumers shout "I don't understand" on social platforms.
In addition, the reporter noticed that in addition to the dazzling packages provided by a single travel agency, the pricing between different travel agencies is even more varied, such as the reporter through the Fliggy platform search for "Korean tourist visa", the most expensive results to charge more than 1500 yuan, the cheapest only 139 yuan, and the pricing of the package often fluctuates up and down, and there is no fixed number.
At present, re-entering the Japanese visa product page of this travel agency, I found that the package purchased by Ms. Sheng has been removed, and the new package has different charging and pricing.
The visa agency market still needs to be regulatedSo, how should the service content and fee standard be determined for the visa application business?
"It's always the travel agencies themselves who have the final say." Ms. Wang, who has been working as a visa agency in a travel agency for a long time, told reporters, "Through the agency business, travel agencies charge different amounts of service fees in addition to the visa fees required by the consulate, of which expedited processing and simplified procedures are the two most common publicity points. As for which services should be included in an agency package and what the pricing standards are, there is no uniform standard. In addition, the service itself is difficult to quantify, and the final charge to consumers can only be a package price. ”
"In fact, it is already unreasonable for so many travel agencies on the market to undertake visa services." Ms. Wang added, "Strictly speaking, only travel agencies with immigration qualifications can enter the consulate to send visas and agents, but in fact, many travel agencies have forcibly squeezed into this market in the form of affiliation, hoping to get a piece of the pie." She believes that the threshold for the visa business itself is not high, most of the work is carried out around the desk, and it does not require too many personnel, too large space, and after the pricing is arbitrary, the profit space that can be brought is greatly improved.
According to the Japanese Consulate in Shanghai, travel agencies with visa agency qualifications (partial list).
However, when the reporter inquired about the relevant regulations, he found that what Ms. Wang said "there has been no standardization" is not entirely correct. As early as 2007, Announcement No. 90 of the National Development and Reform Commission stipulated that legally qualified intermediaries entrusted by foreign embassies and consulates in China can charge agency service fees for Chinese citizens for private visa business, and the upper limit of the fee is 260 yuan per person. However, as of January 2018, the government pricing of private visa services for Chinese citizens was abolished, and only the relevant service agencies were proposed to operate legally, clearly mark prices, and provide services of acceptable quality and reasonable prices.
In this regard, Ms. Wang hopes that the agency visa market can be more strictly supervised, "such as strengthening the qualification review, limiting the business to clearly qualified travel agencies, or refining the pricing of items, so that consumers can obtain product information more clearly, and requiring travel agencies to explain in detail the refund measures of related businesses during the transaction process." "In addition, it is also necessary to remind consumers that when choosing a visa travel agency, they must pay attention to inquiring about relevant qualifications, clarify the services in the package and the corresponding pricing, so as to ensure smooth travel in the future."
(Watch News)