Shopping scams in China

Scratch Card winner – heavy discount on 3 items of Jewellery

The_Lamberts 29 Jul 2019 3 0

Country: China

Autonomous region‎: ‎Guangxi

City: Guilin

Date: July 2019

Location: High street shop

Illegal or just plain Sharp Practice/Daylight Robbery?: Probably not technically anything illegal in China perse, as looking back on the incident the staff involved had been V careful in what they said and did. Alarm bells should have been sounding when things seem too good to be true. It exploits shock experienced when a customer wins something unexpected.. and relies on judgement being temporarily suspended during this period.

Scam Description: After buying some (fairly expensive but genuinely delicious) tea in the front of the shop, the customer (tourist) is told that as they had spent so much they are entitled to a free gift (some jewellery) and provided with some vouchers. The customer is then directed to the back of the store to redeem the vouchers. At a jewellery counter at the back of the store (containing some relatively expensive looking items of jade/gold/precious stones), the assistant then provides the customer with a very simple string bracelet with a single wooden bead (so laughably bad it appears to have not been even worth the trip to the back of the store). At this point the assistant then produces some scratch cards and doles out 2 or 3 per 100 RMB spent. The customer is then left to scratch off the panels. Upon return the assistant then points to one that has revealed some red Chinese symbols and upon checking on a sheet appears shocked and announces that the customer has won the 1st/2nd prize in the company’s current competition. The prize is then announced.. that from the very same jewellery counter at the back of the store.. the customer is to choose up to 3x items and only has to pay for the labour costs (this equates to an amazingly generous 82% reduction in the displayed cost). It is of course now up to the customer to exercise restraint and inspect the goods properly and assess whether they are even worth the 18% of the listed price before parting with their money.

The catch: The jewellery looks very nice but is in fact gold plated silver with cheap/lab grown stones. I’m sure that the warnings are there, but this is definitely aimed at the foreign tourist who cant read Chinese (I’m not sure about the jade jewellery.. but suspect it was was also not worth the displayed price).

Were we caught. Yes, but we stopped at one item as we started to smell a rat when we saw how the rings were able to be stretched to size. We therefore only spent aprox EUR60. The staff seemed a bit upset that we stopped at only one item and we suspect that the big profit for them is when the 3x items are “claimed”. Upon checking when we got home, the ruby ring we had “won” was lab grown and the gold ring was in fact gold plated silver. We strongly suspect that even the EUR60 we had paid was probably a bit too much for the ring… Caveat Emptor.

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Fake Rolex & empty water bottles – Tien An Men square in Beijing, China

JGADV 27 Jun 2019 2 0

Where?
Forbidden City entrance and Tien An Men square in Beijing, China

Who?
Local hawkers

How it works?
Souvenir vendors sell all kinds of souvenirs, from the Red book of Mao to keychains and other small stuff, including fresh drinks.

The vendors don’t lie to you, they even say they sell fake Rolex watches, these cost only 1 USD for them, but they will sell them for 20 USD or 20 EUR. Don’t even think that it’s still a nice watch, they only run for about 2 or 3 days and then they stop working and just become a decorative plastic piece.

Secondly the vendors ask you not to discard of empty drink bottles but give your bottles to them, behind the next building there is a guy filling the bottles with tapwater that isn’t always clean and they put a fake sticker on the bottle and close it again with plastic seal so you think it’s a new bottle. When you buy one of these bottles you can’t be sure you ‘re drinking clean water.

Tips:
• Never give your empty bottles to anyone, just throw them in the bins.
• Sure you can buy a fake Rolex, after all, counterfeiting has become a Chinese Culture, never pay more than 5 USD.
• Never buy water from hawkers, only from real shops and fixed souvenir stands.

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Fake iPhone X swap

Rham 18 Nov 2017 2 0

I was scammed by someone selling an iPhone X he told me he cant go home because he doesn’t have any money. He showed me the receipt and original iPhone. After checking the phone its original and all stuff. Now he was trying to sell me the phone for 4,000 yuan and i told him i dont have money.

Then i decided to get it for 2500 yuan. Cause i might sell it for higher price. After how many hours checking. He pressured me to hurry cause he still needs to go to hong kong. He gave me the phone in the box and gave him the cash.

When i checked whats in the box. Its a fake iPhoneX. I was really sad and my trust has been broken. I have his picture.

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