Claims of ugly sales tactics probed at Hong Kong beauty parlours

Customs officers are looking into complaints that a Tsim Sha Tsui beauty parlour and its Kwun Tong partner adopted high-pressure tactics to coerce four customers into forking out HK$500,000 on treatment, including one who was only in her underwear.

There are also claims beauty parlour staff took customers’ credit cards without their consent and modified transaction information in one case.

“These were very shameful tactics,” Democratic Party district councillor Yuen Hoi-man, who has been assisting the alleged ­victims, said. “The cases were no different to robberies.”

Of the four complaints, one was made against the Tsim Sha Tsui branch of VS Beauty and three against its Kwun Tong ­partner parlour, Shynne Beauty.

Customers say they were ­coerced into paying for ­treatment over the past two years.

Yuen said he has contacted the Customs and Excise Department, which confirmed its investigation.

One victim, who did not want to be identified, said she was wearing only her underwear at the Kwun Tong parlour when three members of staff ran inside the treatment room to persuade her to buy further treatment, which cost more than HK$80,000.

“I didn’t confront them ­because I felt very embarrassed at the time,” she said.

Another alleged victim from the same parlour was persuaded to take part in a beauty contest, where various branches ­competed against each other.

A member of staff told her she only had to pay “a few hundred for two years”, she said. By joining the contest, she was told she would receive other benefits.

Instead she was charged HK$15,000, she said.

Yuen said the customer spent the next few weeks arguing with the parlour over whether she should be charged.

However the bank deadline for the transaction had already passed and the parlour changed the date without customer approval, allowing the payment to go through, he said.

In the case at the Tsim Sha Tsui parlour, a customer said she only realised after a few beauty ­injections that those administering them were not registered ­doctors, as required by law.

When reached by phone, staff at the two parlours said they would pass inquiries by thePostto management.

However, a response was not forthcoming.

Yuen said he had complained to the parlours, but both denied their staff had coerced customers into buying beauty packages.

Customs officers received 64 complaints concerning yoga and fitness centres in the first three months of the year, twice as many than in the corresponding period last year.

(SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST)