Wanting to add points to their own appearance through medical beauty, they are helpless and shy, which is a problem encountered by many young beauty lovers. To this end, some financial institutions and third-party medical aesthetic institutions have cooperated to launch products such as "medical beauty installment" and "medical beauty loan". At the same time, chaos such as "inducing consumers to over-borrow" and "third-party cooperative institutions forcibly tying up unrelated products and services" occurs from time to time, and Aoyi reporters personally test the medical beauty APP and visit the field offline to explore the secret of "installment beauty".
The evaluation of medical beauty APP does not appear "medical beauty loan" advertisement
In response to chaos such as "medical beauty installment" and "medical beauty loan", the relevant departments began to issue standardized policies. As early as June 9, the China Internet Finance Association issued an initiative on regulating financial products and financial services related to medical beauty. The initiative proposes that financial institutions do not cooperate with any illegal medical beauty institutions and do not provide relevant financial products and services to any illegal medical beauty institution customers.
In this evaluation, the reporter did not find the "medical beauty loan" promotional page in the medical beauty platform, but most medical beauty products opened the Huabei installment service, supporting 3, 6, 12 installment payments, and the handling fee was 2.3%, 4.5%, and 7.5% respectively. The slogan of the staging page is: "Easy to become beautiful, no pressure".
In addition, the "More Beautiful" APP launched the "More Beautiful Sub-Card". It is understood that this is a "light medical beauty service sub-card", claiming that the authentic fidelity, low price transparency, strict selection of institutions, worry-free refund, after purchase can be used in the city's institutions. The reporter noticed that the APP customer service center has a Q&A service of "buying white strips" and "Yiren Loan", but the reporter dialed according to the number provided on the page, showing "no such business number". The reporter consulted the human customer service, and the page displayed "customer service is not online" for a long time.
"New oxygen" APP launched the "Meci Card", it is reported that the Meci card is the first medical beauty skin care card launched by the new oxygen platform, the Meci card users enjoy the after-sales protection provided by the platform from medical beauty insurance to the after-sales protection that can not be refunded at any time, and can be consumed across stores in the city.
Complaints about "medical beauty loans" are continuous
On the black cat complaint platform, many consumers complained about the encounter of the "medical beauty loan" routine: some people wanted to do a few hundred yuan of photon skin rejuvenation, but they were sold to buy tens of thousands of yuan of beauty projects. When consumers hesitate due to high prices, the salesman will recommend customers to apply for "medical beauty loans".
In the actual visit, the Aoyi news reporter found that there are indeed medical beauty institutions and financial institutions to cooperate to launch the "medical beauty loan" project.
In a medical beauty institution focusing on liposuction projects on Huaming Road in Zhujiang New Town, the consultant formulated a "liposuction + partial filling" program for reporters after understanding the reporter's desire to "slim off his legs", with a total cost of 49920 yuan.
When it was learned that the reporter's funds may be insufficient, the other party said that the institution supported Huabei and credit card installments. The reporter then said that the amount was limited, asked whether there were other ways to lend, the other party said that there was indeed cooperation with financial institutions, and took out his mobile phone to show the reporter the "medical beauty loan" service in the "Degree Xiaoman Finance" APP.
"If you borrow money at a line of 50,000 yuan, you can be given up to 18 installments, with a service fee of 550 yuan and a principal of 2777.77 yuan, respectively." The consultant said that once the loan is confirmed, she can help with it on the spot. After the reporter repeatedly confirmed the loan method, the consultant informed that the loan funds were directly given to the medical beauty institutions and would not hit the reporter's account.
The reporter then downloaded the "Degree Xiaoman Finance" APP, which does have a "medical beauty loan" entrance, but the application channel needs to scan the QR code of the merchant to accept the loan service.
Image source: Screenshot of Du Xiaoman APP
The reporter found on the black cat complaint platform that many consumers complained about medical beauty institutions and consumer finance companies for concealing fees, high interest, high handling fees, violent collection and other behaviors.
Image source: Black Cat Platform
At the same time, a search on major social platforms found that most consumers believe that the interest rate of "medical beauty loans" is too high and regret the loan behavior.
Experts said that at present, There are two ways to control lending interest rates in China, and there is no clear limit on the laws and regulations on lending interest rates of financial institutions, so there is no clear interest rate ceiling in theory; for private lending interest rates, according to the latest judicial interpretation issued by the SPC, the upper limit of judicial protection is four times that of the one-year loan market quotation rate (LPR) issued by the central bank, and the current annualization cannot exceed 15.4%. However, at present, the interest rate of "medical beauty loans" is indeed high and abnormally high, and some even exceed the annualized interest rate of 30%, in addition to a variety of fees.
Liu Dan, who worked in financial institutions, told reporters that the so-called various service fees charged in the "medical beauty loan" are actually to deduct a part of the money from the consumer's principal before lending, and achieve high profits through hidden charges.
The chaos of "medical beauty loans" needs to be rectified
The reporter combed and found that the financial product of "medical beauty loan" first appeared in 2014, until 2016, when the giant entered. First of all, The new oxygen launched the medical beauty staging product, Baidu Finance, Meituan, Dianping followed up, that is, the installment, Home Credit Financial and other licensed consumer finance companies have successively launched medical beauty loan products.
Source: The data of the medical beauty staging platform compiled by a platform in 2018
However, medical beauty loans have also derived new consumption traps and other phenomena. In this context, a storm of rectification around the chaos of medical beauty loans has also begun.
At the beginning of June this year, the China Mutual Fund Association issued a document advocating the regulation of medical beauty-related financial products and financial services, requiring financial institutions not to cooperate with any illegal medical beauty institutions and not to provide relevant financial products and services to any illegal medical beauty institution customers. It also emphasizes that financial institutions should choose third-party medical beauty institutions with complete licenses and legal compliance to cooperate, and establish relevant mechanisms to regularly assess their legal compliance, and if there are violations of laws and regulations, they should immediately stop cooperation; in August, the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange have requested that the newly listed consumer financial asset securitization (ABS) products prohibit the addition of new "medical beauty consumer finance" related assets into the pool, and the issued ABS products are not affected. The industry reported that at present, some consumer gold companies have stopped cooperation with medical beauty institutions.
Subsequently, the China Plastic Surgery and Beauty Association issued a notice saying that it will publicize the white list of financial service institutions in the field of medical beauty through the "China Medical Beauty" supervision and self-discipline information platform, and advocate that medical beauty institutions use compliant consumer financial services.
In addition to "medical beauty loans", one-sided exaggeration of medical aesthetic effects, promotion of excessive medical aesthetics, and hidden medical aesthetic risks have also become the "common disease" of medical aesthetic Apps. On the black cat complaint platform, there are hundreds of complaints about the failure of medical aesthetics. Aoyi News reporter team will interview a number of "beauty lovers" who have surgical accidents due to credulous trust in advertisements on the medical beauty APP, and at the same time visit relevant medical beauty institutions, please pay attention to tomorrow's Internet medical beauty platform evaluation reports.
Producer: Xie Yanxia
Planner: Xie Jiangtao Gao Chunming
Coordinator: Aoyi News reporter Lin Shiyan
Written by: Aoyi News Reporter Lin Shiyan Liu Jie Lin Shaojuan Jiang Dan Li Huan
Poster Design: Zheng Baiqi