“No cost to you,” they said — an LED sign door-to-door sale
Business owner and sales rep ordered to pay damages and remove the sign, and the judgment was paid

Hello, this is Kwon & Partners Law Office.
Many small business owners sign a contract because of a “free event” offer, and regret it later. When installment financing papers appear too, the terms feel hard to follow, so people often just sign.
Today we share the case of A, a nail salon owner who was harmed by an LED sign door-to-door sale. The court granted every claim, and the other side paid the judgment afterward.

In early 2023, A, who runs a small nail salon, got a phone call. The message was: “We are running an event, so there is no cost to you.”

A sales rep then visited the salon and pushed an LED sign, saying, “We took over a signage factory, so we can offer a low price.” When A said they needed time to think, the rep pressed: “You must sign now to get the event deal.” Payment was set up as installment financing, which the rep called “the same as a bank transfer.” The price was KRW 3.6 million, over 36 months, at KRW 100,000 a month.

The installed sign was much bigger than A had asked for many times, and it was rusty. The salon design also printed blurry. The sales rep stopped answering, and the company’s CEO refused to cancel, saying, “You should have asked for a bigger one.” Meanwhile, the monthly payments kept leaving A’s account.

There were three main questions in this case.

① Did the company follow the legal duties?
It had not registered as a door-to-door seller, hid the purpose of the visit behind the word “free,” and did not explain how to cancel the contract. It also kept pressing A to sign even after A hesitated.

② Who can be held responsible?
The question was whether the CEO and the sales rep, not only the company, could be made to pay damages together.

③ What happens to a sign A can neither use nor throw away?
The company would not take it back, so A was stuck with it.

In cases like this, it matters more to go after the people who actually pitched and sold the product than to fight the financing company. Kwon & Partners took three steps.

First, we checked the seller. At the time of the contract, the company was not registered for door-to-door sales. Based on A’s criminal complaint, the prosecutors handled the CEO’s violation of the Door-to-Door Sales Act through a summary procedure, and we used that result as evidence in the lawsuit.

Second, we named the right defendants. The financing company said the installment loan had already ended. So we dropped the claim against it and named the CEO and the sales rep personally as joint wrongdoers, claiming damages equal to the installments A had paid.

Third, we also dealt with the sign in front of the shop. Under the Civil Act’s right to remove interference, we also asked the court to order the company to remove the sign at its own cost.