After series of complaints, HK consumer council asks citizens to be careful of offers

More than 480 million registrations for Hong Kong's voucher scheme have been recorded as of 11 July, but the city's Consumer Council have warned that citizens have to be aware of the offers provided by merchants, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) and the city's financial secretary Paul Chan.

In his weekly blog, Chan said on Sunday that the e-voucher scheme received more than 480 million registrations. Among them, about 80% or more than 390 million were done via electronic registration with information summited during last year's citywide cash payout scheme. Chan said that since the start of the registration period on 4 July, although citizens have encountered a slow registration process, the problems have been fixed and all citizens need not wait to finish the registration process now.

He added that normally citizens need to finish the registration process in a few minutes.

Meanwhile, the SCMP reported that the Consumer Council had received complaints even last month, prior to the commencement of the registration process. It cited the council's chief executive Gilly Wong that consumers can easily get confused by all offers provided by merchants due to a wide variety of offerings from supermarkets, telecoms, and beauty businesses.

Four payment service providers, including Octopus Card, AlipayHK, Tap & Go, and WeChat Pay HK, have rolled out billions of dollars worth of rebates, lucky draws, gifts and even bonus point schemes in collaboration with shopping centres and retails chains.

For example, AlipayHK and Sino Group have joined forces to launch the “AlipayHK x Sino VouchersLand” campaign in Olympian City mall, featuring six interactive zones covering diversified consumer experiences of lifestyle, catering, retail and other services while enabling visitors to experience AlipayHK's consumer services while participating in a wide variety of interactive games to win rewards on top of consumption vouchers.

To protect themselves, Wong asked spenders to check whether their preferred shopping destination allows shoppers to use their chosen payments service system. If they fail to do so, shoppers may end up spending their own money instead of the vouchers offered by the government.

Meanwhile, she also advised that shoppers who want to buy cash vouchers or gift coupons might end up wasting them as these coupons could have a shorter life. In addition, Wong said consumers should always keep receipts as evidence for potential disputes.

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