Plastic diary becomes "fake diary", beauty loan becomes "usury", and some drugs are "three no products"
The brutal growth of beauty and plastic surgery industry still needs strict supervision
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The pursuit of beauty is everyone's right, and there is nothing wrong with it. However, in order to pursue perfection, they excessively rely on medical and aesthetic surgery, facing not only high costs, but also many frauds: fake plastic surgery diaries, cosmetic loans as "usury", drugs as "three no products"... Consumers may fall into the "beauty trap" if they are not careful.
"The AI face measurement function in the medical beauty app can always detect some problems, while the light from some medical institutions makes people see their pores in the mirror are huge, which is much uglier than usual. I was just not very satisfied with a certain part in the past, but now the more medical beauty institutions go, the more they feel that they are not right anywhere." Cui Jing, a 24-year-old white collar from Beijing (alias) Graduated from the dance department of Central University for Nationalities, she has a beautiful face, but she has not escaped the temptation of plastic surgery.
During her college years, Cui Jing learned about medical beauty plastic surgery through a medical beauty app. Since then, she has been out of control. Cui Jing told reporters that every few months, she would choose a plastic surgery institution from the medical beauty APP to inject whitening needles and face slimming needles. "At the beginning, I only dared to give injections when I was exposed to medical beauty. Later, I made 'eye synthesis' under the advice of medical staff. Everyone said that my eyes were bigger and more spiritual."
However, Cui Jing also admitted to the reporter that she is very upset and feels that she has been "brainwashed" by the medical beauty platform. Now she is facing not only expensive expenses, but also her own imperfect troubles.
In fact, some medical beauty platforms are just using technical means, advertisements, plastic surgery diaries and "stories" of plastic surgery to "brainwash" some women and induce them to have plastic surgery. Behind this, there are also problems such as fake plastic diaries, beauty loans as "usury", and drugs as "three no products". Consumers may fall into the "beauty trap" if they are not careful.
While faking themselves, induce users to fake
According to the founder of a medical beauty organization in Beijing, there are a large number of live medical beauty diaries and medical beauty organizations settled in the medical beauty app. When new users use the existing medical beauty diaries to choose a favorite medical beauty organization for consumption, the platform will collect service fees from it, which is also its main source of income.
"Yimei APP has accumulated a large number of live notes and constructed a closed transaction loop, which just hit the pain point of many users' needs. If it always carries out content marketing based on live notes, it is a good thing for users. However, because the current medical and aesthetic industry is extremely non-standard and chaotic, the use of star cases without permission to create gimmicks, and the use of jigsaw puzzles, grafting means to fabricate false cases, have had the opposite effect, making beauty seekers more cautious. " Said the founder of the above medical beauty organization.
The reporter learned in the interview that some medical beauty apps failed to supervise the content released by medical institutions on the platform, which led to the flooding of false "plastic diaries" on the platform, and even led to the birth of an industrial chain of "plastic diaries" and "plastic images". A reporter searched an e-commerce platform and found that there were a large number of before and after comparison pictures about cosmetic surgery, but many pictures had traces of being revised.
In addition, some medical institutions in the platform use cash back to induce users to write "positive" journals. Ms. Liu, a Shanghai consumer, complained to reporters that in March this year, she bought a hot Maggie project of 6000 yuan from a medical institution in an APP, and wrote "Beauty Diary", and then she could get 550 yuan back. The next day, she went to the institution to do the hot Maggie project. Three months later, it still had little effect, which was not as good as the effect of platform publicity.
"So I recorded my process truthfully in my diary, but the customer service said that it was easy to pass the 'Beauty Diary' only if it was positive. Let me change my comments. If I don't change it, I can't pass, and I can't return."
The reporter searched the Sina Black Cat complaint platform and found that there are still many cases like Ms. Liu complaining about medical institutions' borrowing cash to induce users to write "positive" diaries.
Implicit hidden charges for beauty loan products
It is a problem that many beauty seekers will encounter when they want to have plastic surgery, but they cannot afford it because of the high cost. In this context, some financial institutions have cooperated with the beauty APP platform to launch beauty loan products, allowing consumers to pay in installments. However, beauty loan products are secretive, including a variety of hidden charges.
The consumer, Ms. Hu, complained to the reporter that she applied for a beauty loan product of 50000 yuan in a financial institution in May 2018 and paid it off in 36 installments. But when she reached the 20th issue, she found that although she still paid more than 2000 yuan a month, she still owed a lot of principal.
"Later, I looked carefully at the repayment record and found that there were not only ultra-high interest rates, but also hidden charges such as service fees and insurance fees every month. The service fees and insurance fees per month were about 600 yuan, and the first 20 periods added up to more than 10000 yuan. The actual annual loan interest rate was far higher than the original salesman said 8%." Ms. Hu said.
The reporter found on Sina Complaint Platform and Ju Complaint Platform that the annual interest rate of some beauty loans was even 36% higher than the national maximum red line, becoming "usury" products.
The "barbaric growth" of the industry needs strict supervision
In recent years, the plastic surgery industry has "grown savagely", but the competition is also fierce, and some institutions have left the market without supporting for several years. According to the data checked by the enterprise, 2600 medical and aesthetic hospitals closed down in 2019, including large and medium-sized medical and aesthetic hospitals. The founder of Yantai beauty making medical beauty summed up the institutions that are easy to fail: those that do not know how to operate, those that do not know how to operate, and those that ignore safety risks.
"Endangered institutions will inevitably use various means to survive, and they are the black sheep in the industry." Zhang Xi, the founder of a medical beauty institution in Yantai, told reporters that some medical beauty institutions stationed in the medical beauty APP platform were suspected of selling illegal drugs such as botulinum toxin in order to reduce costs. "For example, botulinum toxin is not ineffective, but it is currently illegal in China."
Recently, the Shanghai police, together with the Shanghai market supervision, drug supervision, health care and other departments, carried out in-depth investigation and concentrated crackdown to dismantle two criminal gangs illegally operating smuggled medical and aesthetic products. It is understood that a considerable number of these illegally smuggled medical and aesthetic products have not been approved by the state for import, and some of them are even "three no products", so the quality cannot be guaranteed.
In this regard, relevant experts said that no matter online platforms or offline medical institutions, there are some chaos in the medical beauty industry, which requires the relevant departments to strictly supervise medical beauty related advertising, beauty loans, drugs, etc. At the same time, because the medical and aesthetic industry involves many problems, which cannot be solved by any one department, it is suggested that multiple departments should jointly enforce the law.
Yang Zhaokui, Zhou Yi
(Editor in charge: Chen Chenzi (intern), Wang Zhen)
