While a third of cases involved airlines, 45% focused on travel agencies, in-store and online.
In the competitive world of selling travel, some of Hong Kong’s travel agencies are giving the industry a bad name. 2017 saw 469 complaints about travel services, a 38% leap year on year.
While a third of cases involved airlines, 45% focused on travel agencies, in-store and online.
At the Customs’ Intellectual Property Investigation Bureau, head Kwan Kin-keung said no criminal element was found in 195 cases.
In many cases customers are pushing back over being overly pressured into signing up for travel memberships and packages.
During the experience, “Customers were not allowed to use mobile phones. Salesmen followed them to the toilet. The shop even played loud and fast beating music to exhaust customers mentally so that they would sign the contract without reading the conditions clearly,” said Kwan.
And in some cases consumers signed up for memberships they would pay for in installments of US$128 (HK$1000) per month for 15 months, with no benefits receivable until fully paid up. Other concerns included misleading omissions.
In July 2013 the Trade Descriptions Ordinance amendment focused on unfair sales practices like misleading descriptions, bait advertising and wrongly accepting payments.
Since then an official at Miramar Travel has been arrested, the deputy manager at Thomas Chan Hei-shing travel agency was fined, and three directors were arrested when Action Travel Services suddenly closed its doors in March, leaving customers unable to travel over Easter.