Chinese consumers are raising complaints about luxury brands, which they see as offering low quality goods with high price tags.
A Sina blogger with the handle "Nan Nan" said he bought a new T-shirt under a famous brand, but the color faded dramatically when he hand-washed it. "The 3,000-yuan shirt became a 30-yuan shirt after washing it once," he wrote.
International brands have been subject to quality disputes before. In 2006, Zhejiang's provincial industrial and commercial bureau randomly examined imported shoes and found that only 24 percent met Chinese standards. Those shoes included Louis Vuitton, Valentino and Dolce & Gabbana. More than 300 pairs of shoes were destroyed because they had "serious" quality problems.
A sample check conducted by Shanghai's industrial and commercial bureau also found that imported clothing by Burberry, Armani, Dior and Chanel suffered color loss, high pH, inconsistent materials and more.
While luxury goods are already expensive, their prices are even higher in China because the government has a relatively high import tax on the products.
An investigation by the Ministry of Commerce indicated that 20 luxury brands in watches, bags, clothing, alcohol and electronic products had a higher price than those in Hong Kong (45 percent higher), the United States (51 percent higher) and France (72 percent higher).
Consumers also complain of poor post-sale customer service. One netizen posted using the name "Tina" about her difficulty in tracking down the complaint line for Gucci in China.
"I only used my new Gucci bag for two months before it got quality problems. Then I realized that there is no service or quality complaints phone number to be found on Gucci's official Chinese website," she wrote online.
Gucci China, headquartered in Shanghai, does not have any details of its address and phone number on the Internet. Even 114 operators, who help people locate phone numbers in a telephone directory, cannot provide the information.
Hermes's policy in dealing with quality complaints is to have consumers see a sales representative at the stores. "Our company doesn't have a particular person in charge of this," said a Hermes spokesman.
According to the 2011 World Luxury Association Blue Book survey, China's total consumption of luxury goods had reached US$10.7 billion by the end of March, accounting for a quarter of global consumption and making China the world's second-largest consumer of luxury goods.
But many international brands "have paid more attention to Chinese customers' wallets rather than their interests," said Tang Jiansheng, an official from Shanghai Consumer Council.
Wu Dong, a partner at M&A Law Firm, said international brands should provide superior service in addition to brand image and product quality. No matter where customers buy their products, they should enjoy high-standard services. And the brands should also provide localized services, such as Chinese instructions, a Chinese website and Chinese refund policies, he said.
"International brands have stores all over the world. The standard of services should be the same," Wu said. "You don't adopt double standard when buyers consume products in different places. That is discrimination."