Gaopeng contrite over fake Tissots
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Shanghai Daily, November 8, 2011
Daily deal website Gaopeng yesterday said it has found a retailer has counterfeited the authenticated dealership certificate of Tissot watches it sold online last month.
Gaopeng, partly owned by the world's largest daily deal site Groupon, said it will offer 200 yuan (US$31.50) to customers who participated in one of the site's daily deals, apart from getting the fake products refunded. For those who have already received the watch, Gaopeng will provide an extra cash compensation of 200 yuan in addition to the cash refund for returning the watches.
The official dealer of the Swiss watch said over the weekend that it has reported the case to police to safeguard its intellectual property rights.
Gaopeng said it received complaints from customers after they spent 690 yuan for a Tissot watch originally valued at about 3,000 yuan. The website first denied the charges and insisted the watches were genuine after sending them to retailers for authentication.
The group-buying site has encountered strings of problems since it was launched in March. In May, Gaopeng was accused of a lottery fraud where two winners of a lucky draw for white iPhone 4 smartphones turned out to be its own employees. It later fired the vice president in charge of the lottery activity.
In August, it closed offices and dumped staff, with more than 350 employees losing their jobs nationwide, as its expansions into second and third-tier cities outstripped its ability to generate income.
The overall transaction volume of domestic daily deal sites grew by a mere 0.3 percent on a monthly basis in September to 1.9 billion yuan, compared with a nearly 94 percent surge in March, according to a research report last month by eTao.com, the online shopping search site of Taobao.
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