Undercover visitor reveals slimming centre excesses

If Shylock was merciless in asking Antonio for a pound of flesh, what is a local slimming centre salesman who asked a slightly overweight man to shed 30 kilograms?

Unprofessional, according to the Consumer Council.

Unfortunately for the salesman, the slimmer was a mystery customer engaged by the council to inspect the city's slimming and fitness centres and did not buy into the plan.

The centre told the man, who was 1.77 metres tall and weighed 83kg, that he was severely overweight, and had 30kg of excess fat.

Other centres advised him to lose 7kg to 10kg, but according to the experts, even 10kg was too much. He needed to drop only 10 per cent of his weight - 8kg - gradually over 30 weeks, the University of Hong Kong's School of Biological Sciences said.

The case was one of many exposed by the council yesterday in an attempt to alert consumers to the parlours' dubious and baffling practices.

Complaints about them are growing: 469 in 2008, 514 last year and 777 in the first 10 months of this year. One in four complainants were from males, the council said. Apart from the wrong assessment of weight needed to be lost, other common disputes involve hard-sell tactics, termination and renewal of contracts, problems over refunding prepaid fees, as well as closure of shops.