BANGKOK – It’s difficult to find a government agency responsible for protecting the rights of tourists, a Chinese visitor said after being tricked into buying a fake Hermes crocodile leather bag from a seller in Ratchaprasong, Bangkok.
Miss Deng, a 27-year-old Chinese national who is the wife of a Chinese businessman living in Singapore, together with a lawyer of the T.P. & Associates law firm, complained to the media on January 10 that she was tricked into buying a fake Hermes crocodile leather bag from a seller in Ratchaprasong who posted the bag on Instagram.
Miss Deng saw the bag in the seller’s Instagram story. She contacted the seller directly and arranged to buy the bag on October 1, 2023 for 1.4 million baht at a second-hand store in a well-known shopping mall in Ratchaprasong.
One day later, she sent the bag to the Catch Fake Brandname (TCF), a Thai luxury goods institute, for authentication. It informed her that the bag was fake. Miss Deng then contacted the seller to return the bag. However, the seller refused on the grounds that the bag had disappeared and lost its value.
Miss Deng then instructed a representative of the law firm to lodge a complaint at the Lumpini Police Station on October 6, 2023, before she returned to Singapore with her husband. She then authorized the representative to lodge another complaint with the Lumpini Police Station on November 1, 2023.
The representative of the law firm then went to the store with the police to discuss the return of the bag. The store offered to return the bag for 980,000 baht, deducting 420,000 baht for depreciation. The Chinese woman and the store could not come to an agreement, so she filed a complaint in the media to draw attention to the seller’s behavior.
Miss Deng said through Miss Nana, an interpreter, that she had been living in Thailand for some time but still had difficulty finding a government agency responsible for protecting the rights of tourists. She asked how tourists who are only in Thailand for a short time can get justice if they are cheated by a store selling counterfeit goods.
“I would like to ask the country’s leaders to help in this matter,” Miss Deng said. “I am worried that tourists who have experienced the same thing as me might be afraid to come to Thailand to travel and shop.”
