Nova has brought its current suffering upon itself
(From The Japan Times June 19 issue)

NOVAの違反行為

    Nova distributed pamphlets saying that students could book lessons at any time and at any Nova school, when in fact it was difficult to keep the promise due to a shortage of teachers. It ran ads stating that the admission fee was exempted "only for now" when the fee had always been exempted. When students canceled contracts, Nova refunded smaller than promised amounts.

    Nova also misled some people to believe that their contract "cooling-off" period had expired and prevented them from canceling their contracts. The Nova headquarters distributed manuals on how to deal with complaints about contracts. But the manuals taught illegal ways of dealing with such complaints.

    Behind the illegal business practices seems to be Nova's aggressive policy to expand the number of its schools to 1,000. It now has just over 900 schools. Suffering a loss in two consecutive years, Nova had a consolidated loss of ¥2.4 billion in fiscal 2006. The punish-ment meted out by METI may frustrate Nova's plan to go into the black. If so, it would only be reaping what it sowed.

The Japan Times Weekly: June 23, 2007
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    　NOVAは「いつでも、簡単に予約が取れる」をうたい文句に受講者を増やしてきたが、実際は都合のよい曜日や時間帯に授業を受けたくても予約が取れないことが多く、中途解約時のトラブルも相次いできた。クーリングオフ制度の適用を拒否したり、利用者からの苦情に備え、違法な対応を指示したマニュアルまで用意していた。

    　NOVAは2年連続で赤字を出し、06年度には24億円の連結赤字を計上した。今後の黒字化は困難になるだろうが、それは自らまいた種である。