As many as 66.67 percent of the contracts used in the weight-loss industry in Taipei failed to meet Department of Health (DOH) standards in a recent inspection by the city government, officials said yesterday.
Of the 99 companies investigated, 66 were instructed to revise their contracts and submit new versions by Wednesday or face a fine of between NT$20,000 (US$663) and NT$100,000, officials said.
Fifty-one companies were using the standard department contract for the weight-loss and beauty industries, but the contracts used by 18 contained incomplete information, Food and Drug Division director Chen Li-chi (陳立奇) said.
Notably, discounted non-refundable items and products were not included, officials said.
Some of the companies also failed to secure customers’ signatures on important agreements or get permission from the parents or guardians of minors, Chen added.
Companies are permitted to draft their own contracts as long as they follow the guidelines contained in the government’s contract template, but there was room for improvement among the 27 companies that opted to draw up their own contracts, Chen said.
The 21 companies that were found to not use any contract were mostly small non-franchised business, Chen said, adding that they were failing to protect the rights of consumers.
Disputes generally arise when people move, change their minds, or want to terminate contracts pertaining to weight-loss classes or products, said Chen Bi-chu, chief consumer protection official with the Law and Regulation Commission.
Legally speaking, any products that have not been opened should be refundable, Chen said.
The Taipei City Government would continue to inspect the industry, she said, adding that any contract-related complaints could be made via the 1999 hotline.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the