Price disclosure rate rises from 29.2% to 53.0%

Wedding planning agencies still lag at 38%

Contract omissions flagged as incomplete compliance

Online price disclosure rates among wedding venues and wedding planning agencies remain at roughly half the industry, a government survey has found. Seventeen wedding service providers that violated mandatory disclosure requirements were collectively fined 15.6 million won ($11,600).

The Korea Fair Trade Commission announced Thursday the results of its review of 568 businesses — 418 wedding venues and 150 wedding planning agencies nationwide — examining whether they had disclosed prices and other key information.

Visitors browse wedding dresses at a wedding expo. [Newsis]
Visitors browse wedding dresses at a wedding expo. [Newsis]

The review found that 301 businesses, or 53.0 percent of those surveyed, had disclosed prices and other key information through the Korea Consumer Agency's Chamgagyeok price portal or their own websites. The disclosure rate rose 23.8 percentage points from 29.2 percent, or 166 businesses, recorded in the first monitoring round.

By sector, the disclosure rate for wedding venues climbed 24.7 percentage points, from 33.7 percent (141 venues) to 58.4 percent (244 venues). For wedding planning agencies, the rate rose 21.3 percentage points, from 16.7 percent (25 agencies) to 38.0 percent (57 agencies) — still 20.4 percentage points below the rate for wedding venues.

The number of businesses posting information on the Chamgagyeok portal also grew, from 161 in the first monitoring round to 274 in the final count, lifting their share of all surveyed businesses from 28.3 percent to 48.2 percent.

However, some businesses that had posted prices online were found to have incompletely fulfilled their disclosure obligations — omitting certain key details from contract cover pages or providing them only as separate supplementary documents. The Fair Trade Commission said it will continue routine monitoring and compliance guidance, and will include non-compliant businesses in next year's monitoring cycle for further follow-up.

Separately from the broader monitoring exercise, the commission conducted an intensive compliance inspection of 50 major wedding service providers nationwide beginning in August.

As a result, 17 providers were found to have failed to disclose itemized details and fees for basic services and optional add-ons on contract cover pages, their websites, or the Chamgagyeok portal. After issuing advance notices and allowing a 10-day period for submissions, the commission finalized fines totaling 15.6 million won against those businesses in late October.

Among individual fines, wedding planning agency Dairect Comms received the largest penalty at 2.4 million won, followed by K&M Corporation at 2 million won, Maju Directed at 1.6 million won, Basilium at 1.5 million won, and J Wedding at 1.2 million won. Businesses that voluntarily paid their fines or corrected violations during the submission period received reduced penalties.

The commission also drew up improvements to how wedding service providers must disclose pricing. The core requirement is that businesses post all mandatory information on their websites or the Chamgagyeok portal in a format consumers can download, and that they update the information promptly whenever prices change.

The commission also proposed an alternative disclosure method for cases where a business works with more than 10 partner vendors, making it impractical to list all information on a contract cover page.

Under that approach, a business would list on the contract cover page the service prices of its top 10 partner vendors by sales volume in the year preceding the consultation date, while making the full fee structures and refund policies of all partner vendors available through an attached document or an electronic device.

Where even listing the top vendors' prices proves impractical, the business would be required to attach a separate document to the contract containing each partner vendor's fee structure and refund policy.

The commission also launched a dedicated reporting center on its website Monday for complaints about violations of mandatory disclosure rules in the wedding services sector. Couples planning their weddings can file reports through the commission's website if they suspect a provider of failing to display prices, cancellation penalties, or other required information.

The commission said it will continue conducting sequential compliance checks on wedding service providers to promote price and quality competition among businesses and ease the financial burden on couples planning their weddings.


y2k@heraldcorp.com