From "Professional Debtor" to "Professional Closed-Door": Who Is Tricked?

Recently, the media reported that the early education training institution Gymboree closed its stores overnight in many places, and many parents who defended their rights found that they were dealing with a third-party company hired by Gymboree.

The staff of the third-party company told them: "We are specifically doing this, and the situation of their company 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. Many parents in other early childhood education institutions in Beijing, Meijim and Newhattan, also said that they encountered the same situation.

This news once again brought the group of "professional closed-shop" to the surface.

Professional Closures and Professional Debtors

The so-called professional store closure person is a person who professionally helps the boss deal with store closure affairs, debt disputes, customer rights protection and other matters as a third party. Some professional closers often make plans for their clients to run away, discharge responsibilities, reduce debts, and divide defenders.

The business undertaken by professional store closures is basically from training institutions, gyms, etc. One of the characteristics of these institutions is that there are many customers who prepay fees and recharge, and the number of rights defenders is relatively large. Professional closures charge a high fee, usually 5% of the amount of debt.

Professional Closure is reminiscent of a professional debtor. The so-called professional debtors are some people (who may collude with the bank's internal staff) to inflate the appraisal price of the house and take out loans from the bank, but the bank debt is carried by some people who specialize in helping people carry the debt. For example, the terminally ill, the elderly, or those who have gambling debts. They don't care about credit and are even willing to break the law for money. In December 2023, the Shanghai police disclosed a case of professional debtors, involving an amount of 60 million yuan, and 34 suspects were arrested by the police.

The media found that professional shopkeepers also have similar operations as professional debtors. For example, they will also help clients change their legal representatives to rural elders before the official closure of the store. The cost of living for the elderly in rural areas is very low, and they are willing to go through all kinds of troubles in order to earn a sum of money. It is said that the one-stop service of changing the legal representative can be as high as 400,000 yuan.

For example, the operating entities of Beijing Gymboree, Tianjin Gymboree, and Shanghai Gymboree 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.

Of course, if the legal representative is changed, the debt will not be transferred to the new legal representative, which is different from a professional debtor. However, changing the legal representative does help the owner of the closed store to get out a lot of trouble, making some closure scams easier to carry out. For example, when dealing with debt disputes, customers and relevant departments often have to negotiate with the legal representative, and at this time, they can push those rural elderly people to come out as shields.

In addition to these legal operations, professional store closers also try to help the boss to pay or reduce his debts. For example, when recharge customers call the boss to ask for money, the boss is still under a lot of pressure. But the boss lets the third party communicate with the customer, and the boss is not stressed.

The professional shopkeeper will bluntly tell the customer that the boss has no money to pay, and we can't do anything, we just help the boss communicate with you. Professional store closers also have a set of tricks to divide and disintegrate different customers and make customers lower their expectations. For example, you originally wanted to get back 2,000 yuan, but under the words of the professional shopkeeper, you may be able to get 300 yuan back, so that the boss's debt will be reduced. In the case of Gymboree Early Education Institution, the refund plan proposed by the professional store closure to the customer may even take 30 years to be refunded.

Professional closers have raised transaction costs in the industry

These behaviors of professional store closures are difficult to define as fraud in law. But from an economic point of view, some professional shopkeepers have undoubtedly helped some bad bosses, making it easier for them to encourage customers to recharge, and then repay and reduce debts. Some professional closers will also take the initiative to suggest that the boss surprise and encourage the customer to recharge the value, which is a typical fraud in the economic sense.

For example, in January this year, an early education center in the Harbin Convention and Exhibition Center suddenly closed its store. Ms. Shen, a parent, said that out of trust in the institution, she enrolled her child in 120 early education classes, but did not attend a single class of the new course. This situation cannot be explained by "being forced to close down because of the failure to operate". Because, since the business can't be continued, the boss shouldn't cut the last wave of leeks.

There are even online lecture posters for some professional store closures that say "Many bosses know how to open a store to make money, but they don't know how to stop losses and go ashore" and "It's okay to be in debt, the ferryman will help you", these advertising slogans are tantamount to clearly hinting at the boss "Don't worry about letting customers recharge, anyway, I can help you escape debts".

The emergence of professional store closures in batches has affected the entire industry. When consumers become aware of the existence of professional closures, the level of suspicion of all training institutions and gyms will deepen. Bosses who are genuinely engaged also have to pay a higher price to convince potential customers, which is what economics calls an increase in transaction costs.

Another need for professional shopkeepers

Of course, another factor for the emergence of professional store closures should also be considered, that is, in the current environment, enterprises are going to close, there are many institutional transaction costs, "easy to come in and difficult to get out". According to a survey a few years ago, 40% of companies take more than three months to process deregistration. The difficulties mainly focus on the large number of submitted materials, the complex process and the long time taken in the whole process. Enterprises with small scale and simple business are a little easier, and enterprises with slightly larger business scale will have a difficult time to exit. Sometimes a single tax omission can toss a business for months.

Some people on the Internet said that they once helped a customer close the company normally, experienced the whole process of assisting in the placement of employees, paying compensation to filing for bankruptcy, and accompanied the customer through the whole process of company taxation and industrial and commercial deregistration. He felt that the whole process was very painful and tormenting. You see, businesses that operate normally and exit normally also need the help of professional closures.

To reduce the proliferation of professional closures, improvements should be made on both fronts. First, it is necessary to make greater use of the self-discipline of the industry and the self-purification function of the market. A fully competitive industry can make it more difficult for half-hearted bosses to harvest customers, which is the best protection for consumers. Second, it is necessary to reduce institutional transaction costs. As the environment for businesses becomes more relaxed, the demand for professional closers naturally decreases.

• (This article is the author's personal opinion and does not represent the position of this newspaper)

Deng Xinhua

Editor-in-charge: Chen Bin