Chinese e-commerce platform said it will send disputed Canada Goose parka for verification

Consumers stand outside a Canada Goose store in Beijing in January. Photo: VCG

In the latest response to a controversy involving Chinese cross-border e-commerce platform Netease Kaola being accused by a consumer of selling a counterfeit Canada Goose parka, the site said it will send the disputed parka to an after-sale maintenance agency designated by the Canadian brand in the Chinese mainland to authenticate the product.

“If the product turns out to be a fake, we will apologize publicly and compensate the consumer for emotional damage as well as 10 such down jackets [based on our promise]. However, if the product is real, the consumer needs to issue a public apology and refund Kaola,” reads a post on the company’s Weibo account on Monday. 

The parka has been delivered to an agency in Dongguan, South China’s Guangdong Province on Tuesday for verification and the result had not been released as of press time, according to media reports. 

But this is the third time the e-commerce site has adopted a stern tone in response to the claims.  

The escalating confrontation between the customer and the platform started on January 3, when a Beijing-based customer surnamed Xian filed a complaint against Kaola, accusing the platform of selling her a fake Canada Goose parka jacket costing  5,567 yuan ($823.79). Xian said she had attached photos of the parka in an e-mail sent to the Canada Goose headquarters, who subsequently confirmed the parka was not authentic. But Kaola on January 5 refuted the accusation and said that it had also checked with Canada Goose, and was told the jacket was genuine.  

The conflicting answers prompted Xian to e-mail Canada Goose again, and on January 7, the company responded saying that the jacket was indeed fake. The next day, Kaola issued a second statement claiming that the parka it sold was authentic based on “double” investigations internally and from Canada Goose. But Xian refused to accept Kaola’s explanation and appealed to the site again.

As the dispute drags on, some consumers living outside Beijing told the Global Times that they are closely watching over the progress as a clue on whether they should still purchase Canada Goose jackets and buy them on cross-border sites. 

“Maybe buying homegrown brands such as Bosideng is also a good option to avoid such a dispute,” one shopper in East China’s Fujian Province told the Global Times.

Original Source