It took the scammers only 20 days to go from massive money-raising to running away. After two months of wits and bravery, the North American Chinese parents still haven’t gotten their money back.
Chinese American parent Xiaoping Yin never imagined that she and her 9-year-old daughter, who runs an educational institution in the U.S., would be involved in an education scam across the ocean.
Many training institutions in the U.S. were shut down by the outbreak of the epidemic last year. Her daughter also became a user of the domestic online escort platform Yuzi Escort, where she found a teacher online to practice piano with her. During the double 11 promotion, Yin Xiaoping was just encouraged by the “class teacher” to top up the cost of the course package of more than 6,000 RMB, but unexpectedly, in less than 20 days, the company ran away with the money. The company ran away with the money.
“We do education to do education to be cheated. She said.
Among the more than 1,000 families affected, there are many Chinese parents like her who are overseas. Compared to domestic parents, the road to defend their rights is even more difficult for this group of people who are overseas.
Overnight run or deliberate fraud?
“Yuzu practice is gone, go check it out! “Just 20 days after completing a large top-up on Double Eleven, Yin Xiaoping received a WeChat message from a mother who had also purchased lessons at Yuzi Practice.
She was living with her family in Cupertino, California, and her 9-year-old daughter was introduced by a friend to Yuzi Piano, where she was looking for a teacher to start piano lessons with. Hearing this news, Yin Xiaoping was immediately anxious.
“Due to the market environment and poor operation, the enterprise has been in a state of loss, and there is a break in the capital chain, the company has been insolvent and can not continue to operate. After the general meeting of all shareholders, the resolution of the shareholders’ meeting to apply to the people’s court for bankruptcy liquidation was unanimously passed. At present, the company has commissioned a professional law firm to start the bankruptcy liquidation legal procedures, the subsequent progress will be released through the enterprise public number Yuzi Practice, please stay tuned. “
Seeing such a piece of news, Yin Xiaoping was very shocked and hurriedly cut a picture with his cell phone and contacted the teacher who was accompanying the coach. The teacher also just found out that the platform closed down, and both sides had to exchange contact information.
According to the usual rules of Yuzi practice, teachers are not allowed to leave contact information with parents in private. But now no one can care that much. The company also tried to contact the “class teacher” who is usually responsible for communicating about the course, but did not receive any reply.
Luckily, I was reminded by other parents to log in to the App that day,” recalls Yin, who recalls that after less than 24 hours, the entire app could not be logged in. Many parents who did not log in the day before found that they had completely lost contact with their escort teacher the next day.
After that, Yin Xiaoping was pulled into two WeChat groups by other parents.
“Most parents are in the country. But the group is full of people from all over the world, North America, Australia, Europe. “Yin Xiaoping said. She pulled a small group for a dozen parents from overseas as well.
As soon as she joined the large group to defend her rights, Yin was inundated with angry messages. Parents who had been scammed shared their encounters.
“Some of them were cheated to the tune of nearly 50,000 RMB. ” Xu Boer, a domestic parent who was also cheated, told reporters. He himself had just topped up more than 18,000 RMB. In some media reports, the case involved an amount of more than 4 million RMB.
In addition to the parents’ heavy losses, teachers on the other end of the network were also victims of Yuzi Practice’s runaway.
According to the late statistics, about 400 teachers were owed at least 2 months’ salary, including the piano teachers that Yin Xiaoping used to work with at Yuzi. Some teachers also lost even more money when they did not bring up the money in their accounts before.
In addition to the monetary loss, Yin Xiaoping also did not know how to explain the scam to his daughter, who was still only 9 years old. She found it particularly ironic when she recalled the “eggshell apartments” that were being mined in China at the time. She had often seen news of such “money running away”, but never thought she would experience it herself.
Most of the parents in the group had a consensus – they didn’t think it was a normal bankruptcy caused by bad business. On the contrary, they think it is a premeditated scam.
Packages of classes became the only option for parents
Already know that the long-term experience is not good, but still 20 days before the closure of the big deal to attract people to rush a large amount of money, in the eyes of everyone is a scammer ready to “money to run away” trick.
Time forward about 20 days, November 10, that is, the day before the domestic double eleven, yuzi practice piano “class teacher” app vigorously promote to India Xiaoping new The “Class Teacher” app of Yuzi Practicing Piano vigorously promoted the new promotional activities to Yin Xiaoping. Most of the “class teachers” in these online education platforms are like a customer service, but at the same time, they also have sales responsibilities, selling parents to buy more courses. “The nature of their marketing is that the bigger the package you buy, the bigger the discount. ” said Indy.
The Double Eleven promotion was divided into three classes, and with the enthusiastic sales pitch from the classroom teachers, Yin Xiaoping chose the lowest package of 6,202 RMB for a total of 88 lessons, 22 of which were complimentary during the event.
The user experience over the past year has been without any major problems for Yin and her daughter. “That’s why I paid twice after becoming a subscriber until they ‘ran away’. “
“I am considered a sensible shopper, if not previously topped up courses are used up, and will not buy for the promotion. ” said India Xiaoping.
Parents do not have other options. Packaged purchase of courses is the only way to purchase courses. Indian Xiaoping told reporters that this domestic company’s online courses, do not support the purchase of one lesson, two lesson options, only packaged purchase. Once the merchant “runs away”, the customer’s losses are enormous. This method of purchasing classes usually accumulates a large amount of money, which also induces some unscrupulous merchants to run away.
In addition to the mandatory package purchase of courses, most of these platforms also like the WeChat circle of friends “fission” marketing scheme – – to get the discount, parents must transfer to the next level. -In order to get the offer, parents must forward the circle of friends. After that, they can exchange the screenshots for free lessons. This is a clever way of marketing, which costs nothing, but it kidnaps the user and makes him/her a tool for promotion.
To the circle of friends marketing approach also find it difficult to accept the Indian Xiaoping eventually sent a photo in his daughter’s circle of friends to cope with the matter.
After the U.S. epidemic home order, the WeChat circle of friends mushroomed with very many promotional pictures of parents sun-drawing works and photos of their children, which were actually the requirements of this type of domestic online education and accompanying apps. Parents are also forced to do nothing.
“It does not feel like a preference. After all, everyone must send, the so-called send 20 lessons, everyone sent will also have. It’s just a gimmick. “Chinese parents in Silicon Valley, Zhang Shanshan (a pseudonym) spilled the beans to reporters.
Difficult cross-border rights road
“After spending a long time overseas, you have a low tolerance for fraud. ” said Xiaoping Yin. This is the consensus of everyone in her small group of overseas cheated mothers. Especially when it happened at home, the transnational advocacy across the Pacific Ocean made them feel more or less overwhelmed.
Soon, they joined the parents who were cheated at home on the difficult two-month road to defend their rights.
Unable to visit the scene overseas, Yin Xiaoping followed the parents’ “live” broadcast in the group. A team of people went to Yuzi’s headquarters in Beijing the day after the incident to demand an explanation. But there was no one there, and the door was locked, so everyone was shut out. “
Some other people tried to report the incident at the police station.
Yin Xiaoping, remotely based in the U.S., also tried to dial the phone number of a police station in Beijing, where Yuzi Practice is located, through WeChat Out function of WeChat.
The signal may have been unstable, and the connection was made after about the 10th call. The staff accepted the report and asked Yin Xiaoping to leave the amount of money he had been cheated and other information outside.
Yin Xiaoping then dialed the Beijing consumer hotline across the ocean, and the other side said they would give a reply within seven days. But two months passed, and Yin Xiaoping received no feedback.
At this point, more and more parents joined the group of victimized parents. A large group filled up overnight, and a new group had more than 300 people. There was also a large qq group with more than 1,000 people, all victimized teachers and parents.
Every day when he woke up with jet lag, Yin Xiaoping would go to the big group to see the progress of the domestic victims’ rights.
Xu Boer is the leader of the QQ group for the defense of Yuzi’s piano practice. When he organized the collective report, only 200 people in his 500-member group did the entrusted report together. More people, although joined the group chat, but due to limited energy, intends to learn a lesson and no longer pursue the responsibility.
“I sent the number sent more than 500, I would not know where the remaining 200 people have gone. “He told reporters. More unfortunately, due to insufficient numbers and other reasons, did not constitute the criteria for filing a case.
“Lawyers also consulted more than one or two. “Xu Boer told reporters, “Winning is certain, but winning does not necessarily get you the money. “So as of now, no lawyer is willing to take the order.
Because of his previous work in the domestic media, Yin Xiaoping took the initiative to contact more media exposure across the ocean. Overnight, Xinhua News Agency, mustard pile and other media have reported. The exposure article with 100,000 plus reads seemed to have a huge impact, but things didn’t actually progress either.
After doing all that can be done, there is still no result, and fewer and fewer parents remain enthusiastic about the matter. “There’s not much left in the group that’s still talking. ” said Yin Xiaoping. The time cost of defending rights is too great, and many parents don’t have the energy to do this.
“I no longer hold out hope to get my money back. “Yin said, but what supports her continued voice is that she wants to give overseas parents a wake up call. If no one comes forward, more Chinese parents are sure to be scammed in the future.
Beware, don’t be the next victim
During her interview with Yin Xiaoping, she told reporters that both her old classmates and relatives felt sparse about what happened to her, and that it seemed everyone had experienced one or another online education scam for children.
Even her journalist friend had been cheated during the “minefield” of Yusheng Education. In addition, the collapse of the over-billion-dollar-funded schoolboy also made a lot of waves.
Although similar incidents occur frequently, overseas Chinese who are far away from home are unaware of these schemes and are often easily fooled if they are not careful.
The Yuzu practice scam struck her as unbelievable. Yin still can’t figure out which part of the process she let her guard down, causing her usual rational self to fail to spot the crisis and fall for it.
Since the epidemic broke out all over the world, this kind of escort service has become a huge attraction for Chinese parents in all countries. In addition to solving the problem of children’s education, more importantly, the relatively low price of the escort can also help parents working at home to temporarily handle the children for a while.
Yin Xiaoping told reporters that the piano teacher who teaches lessons on weekdays in the United States costs about $90 for 45 minutes. Yuzi’s piano lessons are less than 100 RMB per lesson, so the price is very cost-effective.
There is an immediate need for overseas Chinese families to start using similar online courses and online coaching services. Such services usually ask for or tempt parents with discounts to share on WeChat. Last year, almost every overseas Chinese mother’s circle of friends saw all kinds of marketing retweets of Chinese online education platforms.
“I want to use my experience to give people a heads up. ” said Yin Xiaoping. She hopes that Chinese parents overseas will be more careful in the future, both in purchasing courses and in choosing platforms, and should be more careful when encountering enthusiastic “class teachers” to sell. Don’t think that just because you’ve topped up, you’re guaranteed a guarantee.
I also hope that people will be less tolerant of such incidents. After all, from her personal experience in opening educational institutions, the education industry may not make a lot of money, but to do it in a practical way, it will not lose.
“Online education thing, is a business, but also a responsibility to teach and educate people. “
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