CashCashPinoy CEO accuses Tech in Asia of skewed coverage. This is our response.

We recently ran an investigative story about how CashCashPinoy, one of the largest daily deals sites in the Philippines, was suspended by prominent bank BDO over the alleged selling of fake luxury goods. Following that, Singapore tech blog e27 ran a piece that contained only Levy’s side of the story.

This is our response to e27’s article and Levy’s allegations:

1) In the many times we contacted Frederic Levy, founder of CashCashPinoy, he did not tell us anything about the details of the lawsuit against Prescilla Ann Lapira when asked.

The original piece also mentions: “He refused to confirm or deny the information we got about the action taken by BDO. He also refused to comment when asked why the PayPal and credit card options were not available on their site.”

Lapira is an individual who started a petition against CashCashPinoy’s alleged selling of fake items. The petition was taken down after the company started legal action against Lapira.

We included the statements that Levy allowed to be put on record in the article. We included perspectives from all sides in the piece.

Rather than addressing the questions posed to him, he threatened to file charges against us if we ran the story.

2) Our story isn’t just about Lapira, but many other consumers who have complained about buying fake goods from CashCashPinoy and other ecommerce sites.

Tech in Asia has also obtained proof of purchases from the consumers we’ve spoken to.

To quote Gerald Calderon, OIC of DTI’s Consumer Protection and Advocacy Bureau: “We’ve heard lots of complaints against CashCashPinoy and other websites such as Metrodeal, Groupon, Ensogo, and Lazada.”

3) We’ve covered CashCashPinoy positively many times in the past.

That wasn’t the first time we’ve written about CashCashPinoy. In fact, we’ve written many articles charting the firm’s progress. Our goal is to cover startups fairly and without malice, and we are satisfied that we have achieved it in this case.

4) As fellow media practitioners, we are disappointed by the one-sidedness and lack of professionalism of e27’s report.