At the beginning of April this year, Ms. Lu, a citizen of Wuhan, had a problem with her Apple mobile phone, so she sent it to a repair shop to repair it, but she did not expect that the repair cost of 7,000 yuan for the mobile phone was as high as 14,000 yuan. Recently, the market supervision department released the latest results in response to this matter.
Ms. Lu said that she sent her mobile phone to the repair shop that day, and after ten minutes, the repairer told her that the chip of her mobile phone, including the motherboard, had been completed, and the repair cost was 14,000 yuan, and if she did not pay the money, she would not be allowed to leave. It only cost 7,000 yuan to buy this mobile phone, and the repair cost is twice as high as the mobile phone itself.
The reporter randomly interviewed some citizens about their views, and some citizens said: The maintenance fee is too expensive, just change the mobile phone. Some citizens said: Now this kind of small store offline has almost the possibility of collecting money by playing the information difference, and there may be some routines. This must be a complaint from a consumer association or something.
Ms. Lu believed that the repair price was ridiculously high, refused to pay the repair fee, and complained to the relevant authorities. On April 10, 2024, the Market Supervision and Administration Bureau of Jianghan District, Wuhan City, based on consumer complaints and reports, filed a case for investigation against Wuhan Baibang Value Credit Technology Co., Ltd., and found that the company involved had a number of violations: the "Baibang Value Letter" font name used by the party to register the company was similar to Apple's official authorized service provider "Baibang" Zhuyin, and consumers were guided to mistakenly believe that it was an officially authorized maintenance point of Apple through the online platform; When signing a data recovery repair order with the consumer, the repair price is not specified, and the data recovery cost is not informed until the mobile phone repair is completed; When providing repair services to consumers, they falsely claim that they need to repair multiple solder joints in their mobile phones to recover data, thereby deceiving consumers.
The announcement issued by the Wuhan market supervision department pointed out that the company involved violated the relevant provisions of the "Anti-Unfair Competition Law of the People's Republic of China", the "Price Law of the People's Republic of China" and the "Measures for Punishment of Infringement of Consumer Rights and Interests".
Yang Min, a lawyer at Hubei Chisheng Law Firm, said: Our country will have such a clear legal provision, that is, if you are operating such a place, or in the process of operation, you must inform such a merchant in advance, which is equivalent to clearly marking the price, telling him the unit price, including such a measurement method and so on. If we infringe on the consumer's right to know, or the right to choose, then we consumers can claim punitive damages, if it violates the corresponding other laws and regulations, and may be subject to such a severe administrative penalty, so we still remind us that such a business to standardize the operation, then at least it is not possible to violate the bottom line of such a law.
Fortunately, in this incident, the Wuhan market supervision department intervened in a timely manner to safeguard the rights and interests of consumers, and imposed heavy penalties on the merchants involved, which not only cracked down on the behavior of repair shops setting up names and asking for sky-high prices, but also purified the market environment and boosted consumer confidence.