IKEA denies forcing customers out

• Source: Global Times
• [10:23 July 08 2010]
• Comments

By Zhang Cao

IKEA China is denying that it has turned away paying customers at its Shanghai store, after complaints have surfaced from online shop owners who say that security guards forced them to leave the store before they were done shopping.

Some of the customers tracked down by the Global Times, who own IKEA membership cards that allow them to purchase goods at a discounted rate, believe that they were sent out of the store near Shanghai Stadium in Xuhui district because sales assistants suspected they were buying products for resale.

The IKEA Shanghai office said that it was not taking interviews from media Wednesday when reached by the Global Times, but the public relations manager of IKEA China, headquartered in Beijing, said that the claims are false.

"We would never ask customers to leave our store simply based on a suspicion that they are buying a large quantity of products to sell off later," Xu Lide, told the Global Times Wednesday. "We would only ask customers to leave if we catch them doing business at one of our stores."

But, an online shop owner surnamed Yu, who sells products on Taobao.com, the most popular online shopping center in China, said that he and his friends were told to leave the store on Monday as he was waiting in line to pay for seven mattresses among other items, including couches and closets.

"We thought that it was unfair since we weren't doing anything wrong, but we left because we couldn't really do anything about the situation," he told the Global Times Wednesday, adding that he has never encountered the problem in the last two years, a period during which he has visited the store on a biweekly basis.

He added that he will send someone else back to the store to buy the items that he plans to sell online for a profit - earlier this week he sold an IKEA mattress for 1,149 yuan ($169), which he previously paid 999 yuan ($147) for at the store.

Another online shop owner surnamed Pan, who also sells items on Taobao told the Global Times Wednesday that he was last week turned away from the store for the third time since June. He said that sales assistants recognized him and asked him to leave.

"I will go back again," said the man, who has been frequenting the store for the past year. "They have no right to stop me because there is no rule against me buying stuff and then selling it later."

As steady business continues for Yu and Pan, who are among the some 100 sellers in the city that sell the Swedish company's products on Taobao, there is nothing that can legally be done to stop the sellers from profiting off IKEA goods, according to Shen Li, a press officer for Shanghai Administration of Industry and Commerce.

"There is no existing law on the practice," she said. "But at the same time, if a store wants to force a customer to leave then it can do as it pleases."

However, Yao Jinxing, a lawyer with Shanghai Dingli Law Firm, said that it is wrong for a company to ask paying customers to leave on groundless pretenses.

"A store does not have any right to ask customers to leave for no reason, otherwise that would be violating the consumer rights law, which essentially means that stores are required to serve all customers," he told the Global Times Wednesday. "The consumer rights law is similar to one applied to taxi drivers, who are not allowed to turn down customers."

Meanwhile, theaters across the city have for ages faced similar problems with scalpers buying piles of tickets to later sell outside to customers. But some like the Shanghai Grand Theatre said that they have never specifically dealt with the same problem as IKEA.

"We aren't able to define who a scalper is by the amount of tickets a customer purchases," Wang Jie, a public relations officer for the theater in Jing'an district, told the Global Times Wednesday. "So, we don't ask our customers to leave as long as they pay the price that we are charging."

Li Xiang contributed to this story