Hi guys,
I went to China recently with my parents and we visited a couple of
cities including Hangzhou as one of the tour destinations. We followed
a local tour group that has quite a lot of commercials done on tv and
is quite well known locally in Singapore. We were brought to this
jewellery shop called the "Cheng Xin Ming Shi" in Hangzhou.
This was what happened there. We were told by the manager that the boss
son wants to see us because we were tourist from Singapore and the boss
was going to open a new outlet here in Singapore in April. The boss son
wanted to talk to us about Singapore. He then brought in a "Thai" dude
who happened to know a lot about Singapore as though he has been here
before and has a Thai accent. He claims to be the owner of a lot of gem
outlets as well as the distributors of many mines in Thailand and
Myanmar.
Initially, he told us to not buy the jewellery because it is not worth
the price and exclaim that "they actually put these high prices in the
shop". He then brought us around the shop telling us that the chinese
government has marked up the price of the goods they sell in the shop
and since we were friends with him, he is willing to sell us these
jewellery at the distribution price. He even offered to give a pendant
to my grandmother as a gift, being the boss. The manager also kept
saying that it is seldom that people are treated so nicely by the boss
son. In the end, my family spent quite a substantial amount buying
jewellery from them.
Coming back to Singapore, I checked goods against the gem testing
centre of China website on the cert and the result does not come out. I
became suspicious and tried to search for the company. There were less
than 10 results(company being such a big company shouldn't be the case)
and to my horror, one of them was actually a complain on the official
Hangzhou Tourism Website. It was a China local tour guide exclaiming
that these shops shouldn't be allowed to even stay open in Hangzhou or
else no one would want to visit China anymore (One of the rare ones
with a conscience). He was shocked by the use of "a fake boss son" to
con singapore tourist. It was dated in 2008 and the only reply from the
official dated 2008 was not followed up. At this point in time, I knew
it was a scam. One year later, we got scammed and I am pretty sure many
others in between.
After telling you guys so much, my purpose is not to push the blame to
the China or anyone else but to inform as many people as possible to be
alert of such scams. Please do not think that such a thing will not
happen to you because they are really good and even me, who was
skeptical at first eventually bought his story. I let down my guard and
eventually my parents got scammed. This will be an experience for us
but I hope as a Singaporean, I want to prevent further fellow
Singaporean from getting scammed. I hope you guys will benefit from
this and prevent them from going off scott free next time.