The Consumer Protection Commission (CPC) urged the Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday not to take local banks’ side, but to provide refunds for consumers who can show proof of membership with Alexander Health Club (亞力山大健康休閒俱樂部), the chain of fitness centers that closed all 21 branches without prior notice on Dec. 10.
None of the 13,000 or so consumers that used credit cards to pay Alexander membership fees have succeeded in filing a dispute on their credit card transactions, and will begin to receive paying-in slips from their banks next month.
“All consumers in this case should not be forced to make payments. Even if the evidence is disputable, local banks should not charge consumers revolving interest rates or send their records to the Joint Credit Information Center (金融聯合徵信中心),” Wu Cheng-hsueh (吳政學), senior consumer ombudsman and CPC director-general, said by phone yesterday.
Wu said that it was unfair for consumers who refuse to make their payments to have bad credit ratings for at least three years, making it difficult for them to request bank loans.
Usually, when companies are no longer able to deliver their products or services, consumers are entitled to ask banks to suspend their loan payments.
Wu said there were two reasons the mechanism failed in this case.
First, almost half of the 13,000 consumers who paid their Alexander membership fees with credit cards do not have their original contracts, and the Bankers Association of the Republic of China (銀行公會) refused to recognize the membership documents that Alexander provided.
Second, the Bankers Association considers Action LIFE (亞健康) — the health clubs that opened in March and leased eight of Alexander Health Club’s locations and equipment — to be the same business entity as Alexander, which Wu said was unfair.
In related news, early this month, Candy Tang (唐雅君), ex-chairwoman of the Alexander Group (亞力山大集團), the parent company of Alexander Health Club, succeeded Jessica Hsieh (謝美慶) as general manager of Agora Garden hotel (亞太會館), in Taipei City’s Xinyi District.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
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