DAAI Detective Co., Ltd.

Case:

Key Words:

untrue advertisement, credit reference

Reference:

Fair Trade Commission Decision of October 26, 2006 (the 781st Commissioners' Meeting); Disposition (95) Kung Ch'u Tzu No. 095148

Industry:

Collection Agencies and Credit Bureaus (8201)

Relevant Laws:

Article 21(3) of the Fair Trade Law

Summary:

1. This case originated from a complaint filed by the public stating that DAAI Detective Co., Ltd. (hereinafter called "DAAI") was established on April 11, 2002 but claimed its "formation to be in 1998" and that it was "the largest credit reference agency in the world." DAAI's representations were possibly exaggerated, untrue and misleading and a violation of Article 21 of the Fair Trade Law.
2. It was found that DAAI's formation was approved on April 16, 2002. DAAI also admitted that its computer engineer mistakenly thought that the company was founded in 1998 due to the responsible person and partial employees had been in this line of work for 8 to 10 years and therefore input 1998 as the formation year on the website. However, advertisers shall bear the responsibility to assure the truthfulness and accuracy of the advertisement when employing data and relevant information in the advertisement to strive for trading counterparts. DAAI shall not be exempt from its negligence though the data used in the advertisement in question was a mistake made by its computer engineer. Thus, DAAI certainly made false, untrue and misleading representation regarding its formation time.
3. It was also found that DAAI claimed that it shared cases with detective agencies located in Japan, China, and Singapore. Other countries in the world mainly have detective businesses. Only companies in Taiwan employ "credit reference" in their company names. Therefore, DAAI claimed itself as "the largest credit reference agency in the world." Furthermore, since there are currently three credit reference agencies in Taiwan, which are DAAI, E-Tong! Taiwan Inc., and Taiwan World Class Inc, with service locations nationwide, and DAAI has more service locations and staff the other two companies, therefore it called itself "the largest credit reference agency nationwide." However, DAAI did not have objective observation regarding the aforesaid wordings and merely used its speculation without any objective data to prove so. These descriptions would mislead the general consumer making wrong trading decisions. Thus, the representations in question are false, untrue and misleading, in violation of Article 21(3) of the Fair Trade Law. After considering the motivation and purpose of the unlawful act; the business scale; and remorse shown for the act, the FTC ordered DAAI to immediately cease the unlawful act and imposed an administrative fine of NT$180,000 in accordance with the fore part of Article 41 of the Fair Trade Law.

Appendix:
DAAI Detective Co., Ltd.'s Uniform Invoice Number: 13104176

Summarized by Chen, Jen-Ying; Supervised by Yeh, Tien-Fu