Chinese Advocacy Groups Say Many Group Buy Sites Violate Consumers Rights

According to the Beijing News, yesterday consumer advocacy groups in twenty-one cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Macau and Hong Kong, released the results of a survey of group buy customers. According to the survey, over 60 percent of group buy customers have had their consumer rights violated in some way.

Reported problems included exaggerated advertising, products and services that differed from what was advertised, failure to fulfill promises and agreements, difficulty returning products, complicated purchasing and service procedures, and listing fake original prices to give the appearance of steep discounts.

The advocacy groups called on group buy sites to establish some standards for quality of service. As far as we’re aware, the report didn’t call out any specific sites by name; thus, no one has responded to it. It’s hard to be sure how seriously to take that 60 percent statistic, but it doesn’t seem out of the question, especially given all the problems even the top-ranking group buy sites have been having recently.

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