Bike Club Deposit Non-Refundable After One Day? Fair Trade Commission Recommends Correction for "Terms Violation"

[Asia Economy Sejong=Reporter Son Seonhee] The regulation of Bike Club, a motorcycle rental company that does not allow refunds after 24 hours from the payment of the reservation deposit, has been corrected.

The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) announced on the 7th that it judged Bike Club's terms and conditions to be in violation of the Terms and Conditions Act and recommended correction. Bike Club is a company that signs more than 5,000 rental contracts annually.

Bike Club's existing terms stipulated that "if canceled after 24 hours from the deposit of the reservation fee, no refund is possible," but the KFTC judged such terms to be invalid.

When canceling a motorcycle rental reservation, it was recognized that there is some responsibility on the part of the customer who cancels the reservation, so there is a need to partially compensate the business operator for damages.

However, the KFTC's judgment is that setting a uniform rule that the reservation deposit is non-refundable until a point in time when there is sufficient time before the rental date and the business operator is likely to transact with new customers imposes an unfairly excessive obligation of damages on the customer.

Following the KFTC's correction recommendation, Bike Club changed its terms from a method that regulated refund eligibility based on the time of deposit of the reservation fee to a method that differentiates the refund amount based on the rental date.

In the corrected terms, Bike Club stipulated that cancellations from 3 days before the rental date up to the day of rental are non-refundable, and considering that Bike Club receives only a part of the rental fee as a reservation deposit rather than the full rental fee, the KFTC evaluated this as not excessive.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.