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As many as 6,000 members of a  yoga chain  have been left out of pocket after its sudden closure yesterday - the fourth  such chain to shut in the past year.
About 60 members of Living Yoga have filed reports of possible fraud to police, involving around HK$530,000. Some members said  they had been talked into prepaying fees just weeks before its centres closed, while others said the chain was still promoting membership packages  this week.
 The company said the closure was due to cash-flow problems resulting from the withdrawal of a potential investor and it had not meant to cheat its customers or staff.
Its closure prompted calls for tighter control over prepayments for services, with a legislator saying the issue had not been properly dealt with despite recent  proposals to amend the law to crack down on unscrupulous sales practices.
Living Yoga's  branches in Mong Kok and Kwai Chung were locked  yesterday without warning, leaving members and employees baffled.
 A notice on the doors said a provisional liquidator had been appointed to deal with the staff wages owed.  
A company director, a Mr Cheung, who declined to give his full name, said Living Yoga was still trying to get the money needed to reopen.   
'We are looking for investors. If everything is OK, we can open again in, say, several weeks,' he said.  There were 6,000 members. 'We did not mean to cheat our members or staff. We had thought that we could make it this time. So we did not tell them.'
Yoga started becoming popular in Hong Kong in the past decade, with many centres opening. But after a boom, the bubble burst amid the global financial meltdown and an ebbing of enthusiasm.
Fitness club Yoga Yoga International, based in Causeway Bay, closed last March. Planet Yoga, which had three outlets and 13,000 members, closed in May. Beauty Yoga closed in August, leaving more than 800 members out of pocket.
The Consumer Council yesterday received four complaints against Living Yoga, involving HK$37,800. There were also 196 inquiries.
The number of complaints against yoga classes has risen in recent years.
In 2008, the council received 139 complaints, of which 29 were related to the collapse of yoga centres. The number increased to 500 last year  and of them, 330 were as a result of the collapse of schools, involving some HK$3.37 million.
Customers are usually asked to prepay large sums of money to take advantage of special discounts for long-term course plans, some from  two to three years.
Democratic Party legislator Fred Li Wah-ming called for tighter controls.
'There should be an independent intermediate agency to keep the money paid by consumers and it would only transfer the money to the yoga centre after services were provided,' he said.
Fellow Democrat Lee Wing-tat urged the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to work out some arrangements with banks. 
 Amid mounting public concern, the government last year   proposed amending the trade descriptions law to step up consumer protection.
Among other measures, it proposed a one-week 'cooling-off period' for sales of memberships in travel schemes and transactions made during unsolicited visits to homes or offices, which would allow consumers to cancel contracts and get refunds on prepaid packages.
But some critics say the proposals do not go  far enough because they do not cover service industries like beauty and yoga centres.
A spokesman for the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau said it was studying the views collected from a public consultation and hoped to finalise proposals to  be presented to the legislature by next year.  
Meanwhile, around 100 employees of Living Yoga, many of whom said they were owed a month's pay, sought help from the Labour Department yesterday. Some said suspicious signs emerged in November when wages were not paid on time.
Out of pocket
Living Yoga, which shut suddenly, is still seeking investors 
According to a company director, Living Yoga's branches in Mong Kok and Kwai Chung have this many members in total: 6,000



Members, staff floored as fourth  yoga chain shuts