RECENTLY, a beauty salon reportedly scammed RM400,000 out of 70 customers through their sale of cheap beauty packages.
According to a Sin Chew report, the salon’s fraudulent activities began in March 2020 (during MCO), through social media advertisement and sending text messages but as things returned to normal, the salon had not fulfilled their part of the service.
Customers were attracted to the various beauty treatments the salon offered such as the picosecond laser freckle removal, hyaluronic acid moisturizing and fat-dissolving treatments, sold at a low price of only RM520.
The advertisement also claims that each treatment could be used for more than 100 times, meaning each treatment service costs less than RM1.
One of the victims, Zou, explained that she had spent RM25,000 on the beauty packages, inclusive of beauty products and accessories from May 2021 until August 2022.
“The services provided were really good in the beginning. This gave me confidence in signing up for the packages. However, earlier this month, the beauty salon suddenly issued a notice to its customers, saying that the company had changed hands, so the package purchased earlier could not be used,” she said.
Zou added that she only managed to use around 10% of the packages purchased before she knew about the management change.
She also said that the new management allowed their customers to convert their packages bought this year into points to make up for the amount spent on the new package however said new beauty package treatments were not offered at market price.
Zou then revealed that the salon was contacted by some customers through their social media pages but had not responded and they had deleted their post and photos as well as constantly changing their contact number.
Later on, the victims banded together and created a group to gather more insights and eventually demand justice after being cheated by the beauty salon.
Zou also confirmed that they had checked with the Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM) and discovered that the salon was under a new company in April but used the same name until October but SSM also showed that both companies belonged to the same person.
Following the incident, DAP Ampang Jaya City Councillor Yew Jia Haur said the victims could lodge a police report and write a complaint to the Consumer Claims Tribunal. He then urged the public to be careful of these scams.