The Consumer Protection Commission (CPC) yesterday said customers should receive partial refunds if they purchased bottles of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) that are not filled to their full capacity.
The commission yesterday announced the results of its two-month-long inspection of bottled gas across the country. After it inspected 287 bottles of LPG produced by 23 companies across the country, the commission found that about 20 percent of the bottles weighed more than the weight indicated on the bottle. Miscalculating the weight of the bottle results in the customer paying more than necessary, because the weight of the bottle is subtracted from the total weight when determining price, said Consumer Ombudsman Chang Ying-mei (張英美).
The commission also found that all the bottles contained leftover gas weighing between 0.01kg and 4.53kg, and that customers are not refunded for the leftover gas.
Chang said 23 percent of bottled gas companies violated regulations by failing to fill the bottles up to near their full capacity (gas bottles are not filled to 100 percent of their capacity to allow for thermal expansion), which means that customers are cheated when charged for full-capacity bottles.
These violations can result in customers being overcharged up to NT$100 per bottle.
Chang said the commission has instructed local governments to step up efforts to check gas companies for violations and issue fines if conditions do not improve.
The commission is also in discussion with the Ministry of Economic Affairs to require that bottled gas companies use standard gas meters in future.
In other consumer-related news, the Fair Trade Commission yesterday said it would fine Easy Way Group for false advertising for its franchise Meet Fresh.
With hundreds of stores across the country, Meet Fresh is known for snacks and beverages that contain taro, mochi, grass jelly and rice pudding. However, officials said Meet Fresh’s parent company, Easy Way Group, violated the Fair Trade Act (公平交易法) when it wrote in its information for prospective franchisers that they would earn “net profit of 20 percent to 35 percent” and reach the “estimated break-even point within six to 15 months.”
The commission said the Easy Way Group failed to disclose necessary additional information to accompany its claims, such as how the estimated net profit was calculated. The commission also said Easy Way Group did not accurately obtain financial data from each of its franchisers to aid in its calculation of estimated return on investment for prospective franchisers.
Such violations constitute unfair trade practices and might have infringed on the rights of prospective franchisers, who are provided with inadequate information on which to decide whether to invest in a franchise, the commission said.
Along with ordering that Easy Way Group remove the misleading information from its advertisement, officials also issued a fine of NT$500,000 (US$15,600) to Easy Way Group for false advertising and failure to disclose important trade-related information.
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