The person who closes the store takes orders
Agency: There is an interest class that you don't want to do, can you take it?
Career Closer: How much debt does your institution have?
Agency: XXXXX
Occupational Closures: 15% of the debt.
Agency: How are you going to do this?
Professional store closure: 10-15 days to prepare according to local policies, including the change of legal representative, etc. Another 15-21 days of notice, and about 60 days of online communication with consumers, to reduce the expectation of claims......
Routine consumers
Professional Closure (Takeover Agency): Store Celebration Discount, 10% off tuition for one year, 95% off for half a year.
Many consumers have topped up their tuition fees for one year.
Institution: Due to poor management, the interest class will be suspended from today. Other issues will be dealt with appropriately in the future.
Full refund!
Professional Closure Person: We don't want to stop working either, we understand everyone, but there is a problem with the funds, and we are also the victims...... Design Dialogue / Liu Yanfeng
The fitness card that was just recharged last week has been empty when I go to the gym again this week;
I just filled the hairdresser as a member, but the next time I went again, I found that even the store was gone;
Two days ago, I just took advantage of the discount to pay nearly 10,000 yuan for interest classes, and now the institution is closed......
In recent years, some prepaid gyms, education and training institutions, etc., have attracted attention to the disputes caused by the "sudden closure".
Previously, CCTV reported on the frequent closure of Gymboree early education institutions, and many parents said that there were third parties to communicate and coordinate online and offline, and these third-party groups were called "professional store closures".
【Word Interpretation】
Professional closed-store
Occupational store closure is a relatively new occupational group, which refers to the group that helps poorly managed companies plan the method of closing stores and running away, and takes over the handling of follow-up rights protection issues.
They are mainly responsible for helping those bosses who want to run away to do the "aftermath" work in advance. These tasks include, but are not limited to, changes in the industrial and commercial information of the company's legal person, provision of transfer plans, communication and reassurance of students, follow-up and arbitration of disputes, etc. They usually serve businesses with a prepaid model, such as gyms, barber shops, beauty salons, cake shops, restaurant chains, etc.
The professional shop closure industry has emerged since 2019 and has formed a complete industrial chain in the past 5 years.
The so-called professional store closers are well versed in the law and related rules and regulations, take advantage of policy loopholes to operate, charge about 5% of the debt service fee, and help these institutions "golden cicada shell", whether consumers complain to the relevant departments or carry out civil lawsuits, it is difficult to refund.
【Questions】
●Are these "professional shopkeepers" suspected of violating the law?
●How will "malicious store closure" harm the prepaid market?
●How to plug the loopholes at the root?
【Case】
The closure routine of early education institutions is similar
"Professional Closers" surfaced
After a number of Gymboree stores in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province closed overnight, parents of Beijing early education institutions Meijim and Newhattan Early Education Center said they had encountered the same routine. Searching on social platforms, there are more posts from consumers who may encounter professional closures.
These professional closers often appear as third parties in the aftermath of the work. A parent of a member of Beijing Gymboree provided the reporter with a recording of communication with a third-party staff surnamed Wang——
Closer: "We're a third party who specializes in this. The company's current situation has no refund option, and the money cannot be refunded. Because I didn't have any money, I didn't even want to close the store by myself, so I asked us to be responsible. ”
A parent dialed the customer service mobile number on the notice after the Newhatton Early Education Center's Fengtai District store in Beijing suddenly closed. The Newhattan third party they contacted said they were only responsible for communicating with parents, such as providing transfer plans.
Dismissing employees, rebuilding customer service teams, lowering consumer expectations, and inducing acceptance of unfair solutions are important aspects of the work of these "professional store closures". The reporter found the third-party store closure of Nanjing Gymboree, and the other party said that he had handled the closure of more than 500 education and training institutions. "In the case of Nanjing Gymboree, consumers may be more excited in the first week offline, but I will keep telling them to actively recover their losses and let them lower their expectations. ”
A "third party" helps the company avoid risk
Change of legal representative
If the consumer does not accept the plan and initiates an administrative complaint or civil lawsuit, these professional closures will also come forward to deal with the aftermath.
Since the end of last year, after a number of Gymboree stores in Beijing have been closed, some parents have sued the operating entity to the court, and the case is being tried one after another, and the case of the parent Ms. Li has been opened on April 10, she said that the defendant who appeared in court is a third-party staff surnamed Wang.
Ms. Li said that before the trial, the defendant directly had a showdown with the parents, "There is no need to provide evidence, you must have won, we have indeed breached the contract, but we have no money." "This is the unanimous attitude of the third-party team towards consumers.
The reason why "professional shopkeepers" are not worried about consumers filing civil lawsuits is that they will replace the company's legal representative with an insolvent "debtor" within a short period of time after they take over.
This reporter found through inquiries about industrial and commercial registration information that the operators of some stores in Beijing Meijim had replaced the legal representative with a person named Li Zhen, whose identity information showed that he was an elderly man in his 70s in a certain village in Shenyang, Liaoning Province; the operating entities of Beijing Jinbao, Tianjin Jinbao, and Shanghai Jinbao all successively changed their legal representatives to Chen Xiongsheng, a 53-year-old man from a village in Huidong County, Huizhou, Guangdong, in January this year.
The parents of Shanghai Gymboree told reporters that a staff member surnamed Yang appeared in the process of closing Shangjia, Lotus and other store locations. On April 12, the reporter found Ms. Yang as the person in charge of the education and training institution that wanted to close the store with poor management, and the other party admitted that she was a professional store closure person, who could help the company escape the risk, from the replacement of the legal representative to the closure of the store, a store service charge of about 120,000 yuan.
【Insider】
The professional closure routine is mature
"Debt service" intermediaries have become an industry
Nanjing Gymboree closed the store said that on the one hand, it can help operators escape 90% of legal responsibility, and on the other hand, it can reduce consumer expectations through communication. Their fees are calculated based on the proportion of the company's debt, which is generally around 5% of the total debt. In order to increase profits, many professional store closure teams will also run special promotions before closing the store, and then disappear after earning the last wave of top-ups.
When the reporter questioned the legal risks of the above-mentioned operation routines, the professional closed-store people said that they would ensure that the debtor would get out of the way.
Nanjing Gymboree closed the store said that after their operation, the person in charge of the education and training institution will not go to jail 100%, because he will not be held criminally responsible, and back to the level of civil risk, they can not help the institution to avoid completely, but no one makes trouble offline, and the risk will be infinitely low.
Shanghai Gymboree surnamed Yang said that even if a consumer sues the court in a civil dispute, their team will deal with it. "The legal representative and shareholders of the company are not yours, and they have nothing to do with you. ”
A person familiar with the matter told reporters that professional store closures have long been an open secret, and there are also supporting organizations such as "debt intermediaries and financial bridges" behind them to provide qualified "debt bearers" for the store closure team.
As financial regulations become stricter and stricter, the people who did not take high-speed trains or planes in the past and live in the depths of the mountains have even slowly expanded into "white people" who seem to have better qualifications - groups with no property, no debts, no credit cards, no children, and who specialize in using debt to make money.
On social media, an intermediary who claimed to provide debt carrying services showed reporters the ID photo and video of the debtor of the day, saying that he could cooperate with the disposal of various non-performing assets. "Find a person with better credit to pay the debt, pass the legal representative to this person, and let the legal representative refund the member. The operating cost of this set is 400,000 yuan. ”
[Lawyer's Statement]
Is it difficult to supervise malicious store closures?
Both professional store closures and debt intermediaries guarantee that the store will not bear legal liability after their own intervention. Is this really the case, and how can we prevent and supervise such organized and malicious store closures?
In real cases, these professional store closers are very cautious, and consumers mostly infer the existence of this role through various information, and it is difficult to catch the "real hammer" in the early stage. In judicial practice, there are difficulties in identifying professional shopkeepers and debtors.
Gan Zhibin, a lawyer at Guangxi Liusheng Law Firm, said that some large companies may have completed the change of equity long ago. Even when it comes to the litigation stage, there is no way to truly identify the purpose of the equity change - whether it really wants to take over the store and continue to operate, or whether it is for the purpose of closing the store and going into debt.
Can the debtor get out of the way through trading?
From the perspective of debt relationship, the transfer of debts should be subject to the consent of creditors, and the debts to be borne by the original operator cannot be exempted because the store is transferred to a professional shopkeeper. However, the civil legal liability they may bear is too low, so it is difficult to punish. Lawyer Gan Zhibin agrees. He believes that at present, the punishment for the untrustworthy is relatively light. Even if the last step is reached, through the lawsuit, after the execution is completed, the legal representative has no property available for enforcement, and as the debtor who accepts the equity change, he bears the responsibility for dishonesty, and there is no big loss for the legal representative.
From the perspective of the industrial and commercial registration system, there are also difficulties in the pre-management of professional closed-store operators who operate stores "running away overnight". If there is evidence to prove that the purpose is to "run away overnight", the industrial and commercial registration authority may not change it. But the fact is often that there is no way to predict the purpose in advance, so it is impossible to refuse to change.
【Expert Analysis】
Criminals should be taken if they meet the characteristics of fraud
Guo Mingjie, director of the Department of Finance of the School of Finance and Economics of Henan Polytechnic University, has conducted in-depth research on the phenomenon of debtors, and he believes that the review of the new "Company Law" for the change of legal representative only stays at the formal change, and does not give a change of actual control, so some people will use the clause to infringe on the public interest.
Guo Mingjie believes that a fund supervision and information review system should be established for specific prepaid industries, so that the company's operations and changes can be traced. In terms of post-remedy, the public security organs should consider cracking down on contract fraud from the perspective of criminal offenses, so as to serve as a warning. Comprehensive CCTV network, daily economic news, etc
【Sharp Review】
"Career closure" will really mess up no matter what
In recent years, due to a variety of reasons, many institutions have experienced difficulties in operating and are facing closure. So the "professional closure" industry came into being, some people even set up online courses on the Internet, the fees for these courses are relatively low, some online courses actually quoted a low price of 29.8 yuan, if you think they just want to make this money, then it is a big mistake! They will continue to "brainwash" the students in the course of teaching, and finally cooperate with them to close the business.
Many people will ask, is it "legal" for them to do this? Aren't they afraid of being arrested? In fact, these people have a special team of lawyers who give them advice and design the whole process. Taking advantage of the difficulty of "defending people's rights" and transferring assets and debts by changing corporate entities. In the end, the "professional shopkeepers" made a lot of money, and the original boss also successfully went ashore, leaving only the majority of prepaid rechargers messy in the cold wind.
"Professional shop closures" help companies evade debt obligations through improper means, which violates business ethics and although they may evade legal punishment in the short term, they will undermine market order and consumer trust in the long run. Consumers should be vigilant, choose a reputable agency, be cautious about prepayment, and report problems as soon as they are discovered. In order to promote stable social and economic development, governments and regulators need to strengthen market supervision, improve laws and regulations, severely punish illegal acts, and raise consumer awareness of consumer rights protection through education and curb professional store closures. synthesis
Post-editorial——
The emergence of professional store closures has not only caused great harm to consumers, but also seriously undermined the entire market economic order.
As a special occupational group, the existence of professional closers reveals some dark sides of business practices, and also reflects the shortcomings of market supervision and law enforcement.
For consumers, they need to be more cautious when choosing merchants with prepaid services to avoid unnecessary financial losses.
For the regulatory authorities, strengthening market supervision, protecting the rights and interests of consumers, and cracking down on illegal business practices are issues that need to be solved urgently!
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