For more than 2 months now, many people in Minh Duc commune, Tu Ky district (Hai Duong) have been upset because they bought household goods at much higher prices than the market price from a customer appreciation gift program.
On July 21 and 22, at Quynh Trang restaurant in Minh Duc commune, a group of people claiming to represent a company in Hanoi came to organize the program "Kitchen interior space launch ceremony". Before that, this group of people came to distribute flyers in the locality with attractive invitations such as "Customers who attend on time will receive a super-speed kettle worth 250,000 VND", along with many gifts worth up to 7 million VND.
On July 21, more than 200 people attending the program received many gifts such as seasoning powder, fish sauce, electric kettles... They were also invited to have lunch at the restaurant.
On the morning of July 22, this group continued to give gifts to people and started introducing some products such as infrared cookers, pressure cookers and multi-purpose pans. Here, some people spent money to buy the products but the company returned the money because of the reason of "customer gratitude, money will be refunded after purchase". At the same time, they made an appointment for people to come back at around 1 pm the same day if anyone wanted to buy the products but had to deposit 50,000 VND/product in advance because the quantity was limited. Many people came and bought products such as infrared cookers, pressure cookers for 4.6 million VND/piece, multi-purpose pans for 750,000 VND/piece. Compared to the price of similar products on the market, products such as infrared cookers and pressure cookers are 2-3 million VND higher. After collecting money and distributing all the goods that people ordered, taking advantage of the time when people were checking the products, this group of people immediately left.
According to a representative of the Trade Management Department (Hai Duong Department of Industry and Trade), "mobile" promotional sales activities are carried out by many businesses outside the province, without headquarters or branches in the locality. Typically, there are groups of people who often give out free gifts initially, then take advantage of the situation to sell items of unknown origin at high prices or collect money and run away.