Almost Scammed in China: The Facial Detox Scam!

I was happily swinging my bag of snacks out of the supermarket when a man waved a coupon in my face.

“Free face moisturiser for you”, he said. “No need to buy or do anything, it’s FREEEE.”

Free? My cheapskate alarm went off. I’ll take it just because it’s free!

He brought me to a salon. A lady asked me to write my name to collect my samples and so I did. Then she brought me to a room with a bed and asked me to lay down on it so she could teach me how to use it properly.

Ok… Weird, but the door was left open and I kept my bag on my tummy when I laid down. You know, just in case this was a theft scam. Then she went on about how we should always get rid of all the toxins in our pores as we face so much pollution every day. She also helped me trim my eyebrows while she was explaining. I kept asking, “No need to pay for that right?” And she kept reassuring me that it was free.

Then she put some cream on my forehead and used a device with a rounded metal head and rubbed it all over my forehead.

“I’ll only do a trial on your forehead to show you how much toxins you have, and if you like, you can do your whole face”, she said. “We have a special promotion now for only 102 yuan!”

I held a mirror that she passed to me up to view the whole process. And was shocked to see my forehead turn black.

“Wow, you are so young and have so much toxins already!”

Right.

“You should do your whole face! If your forehead is so black, you must have a lot of toxins trapped in your face!”

Uh huh…

I kept saying let me think about it over dinner, trying to get out of it without being direct. Which in retrospect, was quite stupid. Because another lady came into the room to try and sell me the treatment.

“You are 26 years old already and haven’t clear your face of toxins before, tsktsktsk! You need to should your whole face now! We have the promotion, blahblahblah…”

The second lady finally left in a huff after I kept repeating, “Let me think about it over dinner”, and asked the other lady to wash my forehead off.

Phew!

Unfortunately, it wasn’t over yet.

http://v.iqilu.com/video/swf/3796373.swf

Found from here.

“I help you to wash your forehead properly now. So you have to pay 48 yuan, ok?”

WHATTTTT!!!

First, it was free, and now I have to pay 48RMB just to get the ink off my face!?! No way. I was furious!

I argued with her about paying when they said it was free in the first place. No way was I going to pay them, and no way was I going to walk back to the hotel with a black forehead! After she kept insisting I pay the amount, I dug in my bag for my tissues.

“Give me water. I’ll wipe my forehead by myself. Where’s your water??“

I said angrily while wiping my forehead with my tissue paper. She finally relented and said she’ll help me wipe with wet tissues.

Halfway while wiping my forehead, she handed me the mirror again and asked me to look.

“See, you must wipe properly. After your toxins go back in!”

“Just help me wipe it off.”

All I wanted was to get out of there. I rushed off as soon as she finished getting the last of the black stuff off in case they held me back to get me to pay for something!

When I reached the hotel, I checked my face in the mirror and behold! Two new pimples with blackheads had sprouted up. I’ll have to take that as my punishment for being stupid.

After I complained to WJ about what happened, he showed me this article about similar scams (here, here and here) happening in China. The salons allegedly used ink to scare customers that they were toxins, then asked them to sign packages. Some were worse – they used chilli oil to wipe the ‘toxins’ away so that they could ask customers to buy more ‘treatments’ from them!

Scary. I was lucky to have gotten away easily enough, but remember to always be cautious of such scenarios!

Especially the freebies. Nothing comes free in life, unfortunately!