A few days ago, Shanghai Huaqianshu Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Huaqianshu"), an affiliate of the online dating platform Century Jiayuan, was fined 200,000 yuan by the Shanghai Yangpu District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau for allegedly defrauding consumers, which attracted attention.
It is worth mentioning that this is the fourth "fine" received by Jiayuan this year. A reporter from Shandong Business Daily and Super Leopard News Network combed and found that since January, the cumulative amount of "fines" of Jiayuan has reached 950,000 yuan. In addition, Baihe Jiayuan Network Group Co., Ltd., which indirectly wholly owns Huaqianshu, was also fined 320,000 yuan by the Beijing Chaoyang District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau for violating the Consumer Rights Protection Law.
At the CCTV 3.15 party in 2024, a series of problems were exposed to marriage and love companies such as Jiayuan. In recent years, there have been continuous complaints about marriage and love platforms such as Century Jiayuan and Baihe.com, and they have been named and rectified by the regulatory authorities for violations many times, but marriage and love platforms have been repeatedly banned on related issues such as "difficulty in refunding" and "false publicity".
Text/Picture Shandong Business Daily Super Leopard News Network reporter Zheng Xiaotong
According to public information, as of July 7, 2016, the number of registered users of Jiayuan exceeded 170 million
Fined for "false publicity".
He was fined nearly one million yuan
On April 2, the official website of the Shanghai Yangpu District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau added a new administrative punishment information about "Shanghai Huaqianshu Information Technology Co., Ltd." According to the content of the administrative penalty decision, in September and December 2023, there were reports from consumers, alleging that Hua Qianshu made false publicity about the information of blind dates in the service in the course of business, infringing on the rights and interests of consumers.
According to the penalty decision, Hua Qianshu is mainly engaged in the marriage introduction and marriage insurance membership service on the Internet side, and is the operator and manager of the "Century Jiayuan" APP.
It is reported that on June 24, 2022, June 27, 2022 and August 9, 2023, respectively, Hua Qianshu's sales staff provided false blind date information in order to prompt consumers to purchase high-end customized membership services. The above-mentioned service products involve a total service fee of RMB 20,799, and there are no illegal gains.
It is worth mentioning that since the beginning of this year, there have been four penalties related to Hua Qianshu, with a total penalty of 950,000 yuan.
In January 2024, Hua Qianshu was given a warning and fined 50,000 yuan for "exempting or reducing the liability of the operator for repairing, reworking, replacing, returning, making up the quantity of goods, and refunding the payment and service fees for the goods or services it provides in accordance with the law", in February, Hua Qianshu was fined up to 600,000 yuan for "false or misleading commercial promotion", and in March, Hua Qianshu was "defrauding consumers of prices or fees and not providing goods or services as agreed was fined $200,000.
According to the Tianyancha APP, Shanghai Huaqianshu Information Technology Co., Ltd., which operates and manages the "Century Jiayuan" APP, was established in 2004, and the legal representative Sun Pengxuan is the vice president of Baihe Jiayuan Group. In December 2015, Jiayuan and Baihe announced that they had reached a merger agreement, Tianjin Baihe Times Asset Management Co., Ltd. acquired Jiayuan, at present, the company is still a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jiahe Network Group Co., Ltd., and Huaqianshu is also indirectly wholly-owned by Baihe Jiayuan Network Group Co., Ltd.
3.15 "On the list"
He has been interviewed and punished many times
According to the China Statistical Yearbook (2022), as of 2021, the number of single people in mainland China has reached 239 million. At the moment of dividends, the marriage and love market is obviously making a living, but it is not difficult to find that in recent years, the marriage and love market, which lacks standardized guidance, has long been in crisis and surging.
According to this year's CCTV 3.15 evening report, a number of marriage and love platforms use anxiety to harvest consumers, and many marriage and love companies such as Zhenai.com, Century Jiayuan, and Love Class have been exposed to taking advantage of pain points such as age anxiety, birth anxiety, and the feelings of children after divorce to induce consumers to buy membership services with a price of tens of thousands of yuan.
Although after the exposure, Jiayuan issued an apology statement, saying that "the stores involved in the report have suspended all business activities" and "a special investigation team has been established as soon as possible to fully participate in the relevant investigation." The company has also initiated an internal emergency verification process to comprehensively investigate relevant vulnerabilities and problems in its operations. But netizens and users don't seem to be "buying it".
In April, the reporter made many unannounced visits to Jiayuan's offline stores. In a Jiayuan offline service store in Jinan, some members reported that as the company's offline VIP service center, when paying membership dues and signing contracts, there was a problem of avoiding the platform and trading in other institutions, and when the company's offline matchmakers received consumers, there were inducing expressions of "urging payment" and "the sooner you pay high dues, the sooner you can achieve a successful marriage".
Another consumer in Jiangsu also complained that she had previously encountered "zero failure" contract scams in offline stores, that is, failure to fulfill commitments when paying money, different electronic contracts and paper contracts, and difficulties in refunding and protecting rights.
In fact, as early as before the 3.15 party was exposed, Jiayuan was punished many times. On September 26, 2021, the Jiangsu Provincial Consumer Protection Commission released the "Survey Report on the Service Status of Marriage and Dating Platforms", which introduced that platforms such as Century Jiayuan, Baihe.com, Zhenai.com, NetEase Huatian, and My Lord Liangyuan have problems including but not limited to unclear refund rules, unfulfilled publicity promises, and virtual membership information review, which seriously infringes on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers such as the right to know, the right to fair trade and the right to information security.
In December 2021, in response to the infringement of personal privacy, deceptive consumption, malicious marketing, and ambiguity of service terms by individual marriage and love agencies, the Jiangsu Provincial Consumer Protection Commission and the Shanghai Marriage Agency Management Association also successively interviewed marriage and love platforms and matchmaking agencies, including Century Jiayuan, Baihe Jiayuan, Zhenai.com, etc.
In the first half of 2022, marriage and love platforms such as Jiayuan were interviewed by the Cyberspace Administration of China for vulgar and pornographic information. In response to the problem of vulgar pornographic information undermining the network ecology on 8 marriage and love platforms such as NetEase Huatian, Baihe.com, Century Jiayuan, and Zhenai.com, the Cyberspace Administration of Beijing, Shanghai and other places separately interviewed the platforms, ordered them to comprehensively clean up and investigate illegal information, and imposed administrative penalties of fines.
According to incomplete statistics, up to now, on the Black Cat complaint platform alone, there have been tens of thousands of related complaints about Jiayuan, and the content of customer complaints is concentrated in many aspects such as "difficulty in refunding", "false publicity" and "inducing loan consumption".
Under over-commercialization
The path to the decline of veteran players
In fact, as a "veteran player" in the domestic marriage market, the earliest real-name membership marriage website in China, Century Jiayuan has established a good reputation in the industry with a serious attitude towards marriage and love, and its founder Gong Haiyan claimed that "after being deceived by unscrupulous matchmakers twice in a row, he started with 1,000 yuan and founded the Century Jiayuan dating website."
During the reporter's visit, the "matchmaker" of an offline marriage agency said, "At that time, Jiayuan had a huge user base, trendy service items and methods, and the cooperation with "If You Are Honest, Do Not Disturb" won the favor of single young people. ”
"It can be said that the rapid development of Jiayuan has had a great impact on the business of our offline matchmaking agency. Mr. Chen, the person in charge of another marriage agency, told reporters that with the growth of Jiayuan's business, many of the original offline marriage agencies chose to move closer to Jiayuan, "Until now, many big marriage agencies are also offline service providers of Jiayuan." ”
"In the market, the overwhelming absolute advantage has made Jiayuan lose its way. Some industry insiders pointed out that the excessive commercialization caused by profit-seeking has made the problems of Jiayuan frequent in the century.
According to public information, Jiayuan, which was founded in 2003, was listed on the NASDAQ in 2011 and became the "first stock of marriage and love in China". According to the statistics of iResearch, the market share of Jiayuan's online dating reached 43.7% in 2010, accounting for half of the domestic marriage and love market.
At that time, with nearly 50 million members, Jiayuan became a "star player" in the domestic marriage and love market.
However, the good times did not last long, and after the listing, Jiayuan's business model was not favored by overseas markets, and the stock price was below $5/ADS for a long time. According to the financial report, Jiayuan's operating income increased from 410 million yuan in 2012 to 610 million yuan in 2014, but its net profit decreased from 58.9 million yuan in 2012 to 20.1 million yuan in 2014. Jiayuan's stock price briefly peaked at $15 after listing, and then fell in the low range of $3 to $5 for a long time.
In addition, a year after listing, its founder and CEO Gong Haiyan resigned as CEO, at that time the industry said that she was "forced to the palace", in December of the same year, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Baihe.com acquired Jiayuan, and Jiayuan was privatized and delisted. From the successive revelations that senior executives have lost contact with each other, privatized and delisted, to non-provision of services, false publicity, and consumer fraud, the once "golden signboards" have "exploded" one after another......
Regarding the recent fines for violations, management confusion and false publicity in the development of offline stores, the reporter sent a letter to Jiayuan for verification, but as of press time, there was no response.
Jiang Zhixian, editor of Shandong Business Daily and Super Leopard News Network
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