Group Online Shopping Sites Become Problematic In China

The trend of group online shopping, which was popularized in the US by services like groupon.com, has been on the rise in China. Consequently, hundreds of Chinese clones of Groupon have sprung up on the web, becoming the most popular online shopping platforms in the country. While they offer better deals on a wide range of products, these group online shopping sites have also led to some emerging problems. CNN Go reports that some Chinese netizens have complained against false advertising and service quality of merchants on these groupon clone sites:

The fierce competition is not the only concern regarding groupon sites. The biggest problem they face is the quality of the services provided by the merchants they work with.

Beijing Consumer Council has reported that they have received dozens of complaints regarding groupon services/products in August alone. The main complaint? False advertising by merchants on the sites. With such a large number of Internet users in China moving to tuangou wang, numbers can also backfire on the companies.

Netease recently reported that Nuomi.com had to compensate its customers RMB 500,000 because one of the merchants disappeared after the deal was sold out.

CNN Go: “The power of group online shopping hits China”