Photo via Groupon Korea on Facebook
Here’s some more troublesome news on the Groupon front (NASDAQ:GRPN), this time in Korea. The South Korean Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has reportedly fined Groupon’s Korea office because an employee wrote 147 fake product reviews on the Groupon website, this according the Korean Herald citing the FTC statement (Korean).
The commission has fined Groupon 17 million won (or about $14,773) and has ordered them to display the details of the penalty on its website. I tried to find the notice on groupon.kr but with no luck, though I should make clear I can’t read Korean.
It’s an unfortunate matter for the company which can’t seem to catch a break in Asia. One would hope that its internal culture would be very clear that such activity is a no no, but in this instance at least one employee didn’t get the memo.
The report goes on to say that Groupon was also discovered to have overstated the number of products that it had sold, but it should be noted that there were three other group-buying sites fined for the same infraction.
Readers of our site will certainly be familiar with Groupon’s troubles in other regions. Ranging from staff cuts in China, to publishing customer information online in India, to botched New Year’s deals in Japan — the Asia map is on it’s way to being covered.
On the other hand, it might just be a simple case of mo’ money, mo’ problems after going public earlier in the month.
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