Before class, the teacher was very enthusiastic, and it was very easy to sign up for online learning courses of several thousand yuan. After-school service, the teacher "sees the dragon without seeing the tail", the phone can only be called by the teacher to the students, and the students call back and it becomes an empty number … This learning process really happened to Ms. Feng. She applied for a refund within 24 hours after she signed up for the business management undergraduate course in Suntech-according to the agreement between the two parties, she can get a full refund within 24 hours after signing up. But it is such a refund operation, but Suntech asked Ms. Feng to wait for a month. "It takes only one minute to sign up for the payment, and it is unreasonable to wait for the refund." In the interview, the reporter found that it is almost impossible for students to contact Suntech when they encounter problems. The customer service phone is directly hung up, and online consultation cannot accept complaints. In recent years, disputes over education contract training related to Suntech institutions have continued. It is not difficult to see that the problem of "difficulty in refunding fees", which was admitted by Suntech institutions in the prospectus, is still the "old problem" of this training institution listed in the United States.
It takes one minute to sign up for the refund, but it takes a month.
On the evening of March 5th, Ms. Feng signed up for a business management course in Suntech. After thinking about it all night, she still had some doubts about taking the college entrance examination, so she applied for a refund the next afternoon. "Suntech has regulations that you can apply for a full refund within 24 hours of registration without deducting the handling fee." On the evening of March 6, Ms. Feng received a phone call from the after-sales teacher. "The teacher said that the fee can be refunded, but the refund process will not be completed until April 3, and then it will take another three or four working days to get the money."
It was agreed that you could apply for a full refund within 24 hours, but the actual operation had to wait for one month. Ms. Feng was a little anxious: "The tuition fee was originally 7,780 yuan, and the teacher of Suntech said that there were scholarships subsidized by the state during the epidemic, which could give preferential treatment to the tuition fee in 800 yuan. Moreover, the teacher recommended me to apply for an education loan with Xiaoman Finance. I can’t stop the loan without a refund. I will buy a house and a car in the future, and I am worried that not stopping the loan will affect my credit record. "
What Ms. Feng can’t understand is that when she consulted the course, the teacher of Suntech kept urging herself to fill in the information and sign up, saying that the number of scholarships was limited. If it was not decided, the number of places would be gone. "I wanted to wait for the weekend break to go to Suntech, but as a result, the teacher kept saying that she would complete the order before she got off work."
"It only takes about 1 minute for the down payment and course selection, and it is no problem to apply for staging after work."
Source: Photo courtesy of the parties
"I’ll accept your down payment first, which is 698 yuan, and let’s apply for the rest for 6 periods, each of which is 1047 yuan, without interest."
Source: Photo courtesy of the parties
"This quota is so fast, there are only 100 left in one hour."
Source: Photo courtesy of the parties
Judging from the chat records provided by Ms. Feng, the above are all messages sent to her by the teacher of Suntech. It was at the urging of the teacher that she signed up and paid a down payment of 698 yuan on the same day. I thought there was a full refund within 24 hours as a guarantee, but I didn’t expect a refund, but there was a lot of resistance.
The strange thing about Suntech’s organization: the enthusiasm before the sale is incomparable, and the after-sales disappeared.
If it was established in 2003, Suntech is the "old brand" of the domestic education industry; However, in the interview, the reporter found that there is a strange phenomenon in such an educational institution with the promotion of academic qualifications as its main service content: the pre-sales consultant is extremely enthusiastic and the after-sales customer service is nowhere to be seen.
After receiving the situation reflected by Ms. Feng, the reporter first dialed the telephone number of the after-sales teacher provided by Ms. Feng, but it is strange that this number does not exist. "This phone can only be called by the teacher. If I dial it back, I can’t get through. The teacher said that this is their internal dedicated phone." Ms. Feng said that she originally wanted to contact the after-sales teacher through this phone call, but she also encountered the same problem.
Since the teacher who is directly connected with Ms. Feng can’t be contacted, should Suntech, a training institution with multiple branches all over the country, have a customer service phone number to accept consultations and complaints? Official website, a reporter who searched all over Suntech, didn’t find this phone. I finally found a phone that started with 400, but I was directly hung up after the prompt tone of Suntech. When browsing the official website of Suntech, the online consultation dialog box will pop up from time to time, but the online consultation teacher doesn’t seem to know how to deal with the complaint, leaving a sentence "Transfer after sale" and then there will be no following.
It is difficult for students to find a teacher, but it is easy for teachers to find students. When inquiring about the information of Suntech, the reporter paid attention to the WeChat public account of Suntech, and logged into the APP of Suntech with his mobile phone number. Unexpectedly, he soon received a friend application from a teacher Guo of Suntech, saying that he could answer the related questions of the self-study exam. However, when the reporter said that he wanted to contact the interview students about the refund of fees, Mr. Guo said that Suntech did not have a national unified customer service phone number, and the students could only find the class teacher if they had any questions.
"When I wanted to refund the fee, I found the class teacher. The class teacher asked the after-sales teacher to contact me, and finally gave me a reply that I had to wait for a month. Looking for a class teacher again, the result is still the same. " Ms. Feng said that she would like to know how to contact Suntech when the class teacher and after-sales teacher can’t solve the students’ problems. "You can’t just wait and drag, can you?"
"It is difficult to refund fees" is a long-standing problem. Suntech does not stipulate the time limit for refund.
Ms. Feng told the reporter that when she signed up, she filled out the electronic agreement online, and there was indeed a clause of full refund within 24 hours. But now look closely, there is no specific process about the refund operation in the agreement, that is to say, the agreement does not stipulate the refund time of Suntech.
Searching for major online complaint platforms, there are countless information related to Suntech’s refund problem. According to the reporter’s inquiry through Tianyan, among the 12 opening announcements publicly displayed from June 2018 to December 2019, 4 were related to education and training contract disputes; Among the 26 publicly displayed legal litigation items, disputes with education contracts accounted for 18.
In addition to the difficulty in refunding fees, the false propaganda of Suntech institutions is also quite serious. In July, 2018, Shijingshan Branch of Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce fined Suntech 900,000 yuan for "making false or misleading commercial propaganda for operators’ goods, or helping other operators to make false or misleading commercial propaganda by organizing false transactions". In May 2019, Beijing Shijingshan District Market Supervision Administration fined Suntech another 280,000 yuan, because "advertisers released information about the performance, function, origin, use, quality, specification, composition, price, producer, expiration date, sales status, honor won, or the content, provider, form, quality, price, sales status, honor won, etc. of services.
In the previous visit, the reporter also found that Suntech institutions had enrolled students under the guise of prestigious schools, so that many domestic universities issued statements refusing to take the blame for Suntech institutions.
From the difficulty of refunding fees to false propaganda, the problems admitted by Suntech in the prospectus have also been criticized by students, but they have not been completely solved for such a long time. As an adult online education institution listed in the United States, Suntech has won the favor of many students by virtue of its status as a listed company. However, according to the actual feedback from the students, there are still many places to be improved in the operation of Suntech. "At least let our students find someone, right? We can’t be like this, let alone whether the problem can be solved, and we don’t even know who to find. " Ms. Feng said that at present, her course has not started at all, and she will always insist on asking Suntech to refund in time. Chief reporter Yu Xiao
