Recently, the topic #CCTV exposed professional store closures# rushed to the hot search, causing heated discussions, which stemmed from the frequent closure of "Golden Baby" early education institutions not long ago
In media interviews, many parents have said that in the follow-up communication, a third party known as "professional store closures" has appeared to communicate and coordinate online and offline.
In addition, many parents of Beijing early education institutions Meijim and Newhattan early education centers also reported to reporters that they encountered the same situation.
What do you mean by "professional shopkeepers" and what role do they play?
Parents in many places said that after the closure of Gymboree
There is a "aftermath" third party
Professional store closers refer to groups that help poorly managed companies plan how to close stores and run away, and take over the follow-up rights protection issues. These professional store closures often appear as "third parties" in the aftermath of the work, and a parent of a member of Beijing Gymboree provided reporters with a recording of the communication with the third party staff surnamed Wang.
The third-party store closure of Beijing Gymboree said: "We are specifically doing this, and their company's situation is that they can't get the money back. Because I didn't have any money, I didn't want to close the store by myself in the end, so I directly asked us to be responsible. ”
The head of a family in Beijing reported that he was suspected of encountering professional store closures. (Photo provided by the interviewee)
After the closure of the Newhattan Early Learning Center's Fengtai store in Beijing, a parent dialed the customer service number on the notice, and the other party said that 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 tasks for professional store closures.
The reporter found the third-party store closure of Gymboree in Nanjing, Jiangsu, and the other party said that he had dealt with the closure of more than 500 education and training institutions.
The third-party store closure of Nanjing Gymboree store: We understand consumers as a group of people, who are bound together because of their interests and will be separated because of their interests. Maybe you can accept 500 yuan and he can accept 300 yuan, then the consumer may be divided into different teams, and the company risk will no longer exist.
On social platforms, there are many third parties engaged in the business of "education and training closure".
The professional shopkeeper devised a runaway plan to let the debtor get out of the way
The parents of Shanghai Gymboree told reporters that during the closure of Shangjia, Lotus and other store sites, a staff member surnamed "Yang" appeared. The reporter found Ms. Yang as the person in charge of the education and training institution who 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 change of legal representative to the closure of the store, a store service fee of about 120,000 yuan.
Nanjing Gymboree closed the store said that their fees are calculated based on the proportion of the company's debt, which is generally about 5% of the total debt. In order to increase profits, many professional store closers will also carry out preferential 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 operations, the professional closed-store people said that after their operation, the person in charge of the education and training institution will definitely not be held criminally responsible, but the civil aspect cannot guarantee that the risk will be completely avoided. "If no one is making trouble, the risk is 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 you, so it has nothing to do with you. ”
Professional closures are not afraid of being sued
"Debt service" intermediaries have become an industry
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. Ms. Li, a parent, whose case was heard on April 10, said that the defendant who appeared in court was also a staff member surnamed Wang of the above-mentioned third party.
Ms. Li said that the defendant had a showdown with the parents directly before the trial, "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.
According to the reporter's investigation, the reason why these professional closers are not worried about consumers filing civil lawsuits is because they will replace the company's legal representative with an insolvent "debtor" within a short period of time after taking over.
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.
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 good credit to pay the debt, pass the legal representative to this person, and let the legal representative top the member refund, this set of operation costs is 400,000 yuan. ”
Debt intermediaries recruit "whites" with good credit in the circle of friends to carry debts
The reporter found through the inquiry of industrial and commercial registration information that the operators of some stores in Beijing Meijim replaced the legal representative with a person named Li, whose identity information showed that he was an old man in his 70s in a village in Shenyang, Liaoning Province. The operating entities of Beijing Gymboree, Tianjin Gymboree, and Shanghai Gymboree all successively changed their legal representatives to Chen Moumou, a 53-year-old man from a village in Huidong County, Huizhou, Guangdong, in January this year.
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Professional Liquidators and Debtors
There are difficulties in identification
In judicial practice, it is difficult to identify professional shopkeepers and debtors. On March 14 this year, more than 40 recharge members of a beauty salon in Guangxi received a civil judgment from the court after nearly two years of rights protection, supporting the plaintiff's claim for refund.
Gan Zhibin, a lawyer at Guangxi Liusheng Law Firm, said that some large companies would complete the equity change long ago. Even at the litigation stage, it is difficult to identify the purpose of the equity change - whether it is a genuine desire to continue the business or the purpose of closing the store and going into debt. In addition, the current punishment for untrustworthy persons is relatively light. "In the end, he had no property available for enforcement, the debtor took on the responsibility for the breach of trust, and he did not lose much. ”
Can the debtor escape responsibility, and how to prevent malicious closure?
Lu Laiming, a professor at the Law School of Beijing Technology and Business University, believes that from the perspective of the contract system of the Civil Code, the transfer of contractual debts must be subject to the consent of the creditor, and without the consent of the creditor, no matter who the agreement is transferred to, it cannot be exempted.
Guo Mingjie, director of the Department of Finance of the School of Finance and Economics of Henan Polytechnic University, believes that a fund supervision and information review system should be established for specific prepaid industries, so that the company's operation and changes can be traced.
Lu Laiming believes that if it is verified that the store has engaged in promotion and ran away before the store closes, it is suspected of joint fraud. The public security organs should consider cracking down on "contract fraud" from the perspective of criminal offenses, so as to serve as a warning.
Source: CCTV News, Voice of China
Editor in charge: Yu Shuai Supervisor: Mu Haoqiang
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