Fake diploma, confusion with medical specialties, price opacity… Between 2021 and 2022, the General Directorate for Competition, Consumption and Fraud Repression (DGCCRF) carried out an investigation into commercial practices in the “wellness coaching” sector ” to “protect the most vulnerable consumers”.
The DGCCRF services directed their controls at trainers “whose specialties were related to physiological balance or mental balance (stress management, weight loss, fight against certain addictions, etc.), ‘life coaches’ and ‘life coaches’. personal development’, including professionals who do not explicitly use the term ‘coach'”.
As a result, “of the 165 professionals and training centers consulted, close to 80% had at least one anomaly in the information provided to consumers in terms of skills, professional titles and rewarding mentions”. Inspections carried out in the last two years have resulted in 71 warnings, 59 injunctions and one criminal report, but most of the professionals involved have quickly come into compliance.
Short, expensive and opaque training courses.
In detail, deceptive commercial practices were observed in 20% of the professionals consulted. They could take the form of “highlighting qualifications the trainer does not possess, such as a magnetizer diploma”, “maintaining confusion with the medical profession by using industry-specific terms” such as “consulting” or “physician”, or even “therapeutic claims (sessions eliminating fibromyalgia and tendinitis, or allergies)”, specifies the DGCCRF. “Practices that generate confusion about the qualities of professionals or the expected results of a service” and that “may cause a loss of medical luck for consumers.”
The DGCCRF also found in more than half of the professionals consulted “the lack of information on prices, the non-delivery of our products for services over 25 euros or even unfair clauses in the contracts (limitation of the professional’s liability in case of error in the information communicated, limitation of the rights of the consumer to exercise their means and resources…)”.
As for training, it sometimes has “obscure content” and is “often offered at high cost, sometimes for very short durations”, on the order of a few hours to a few days.
Source: BFM TV
