Complaints from a customer has cast doubt on a Vietnamese retail store chain for allegedly concealing the real origins of its baby and mother products by replacing their original labels with bogus ones.

The Vietnamese store chain in question is Con Cung (Beloved kid), which specializes in providing products for women during pregnancy and postpartum, and babies under seven years old.

According to information shared on social media, in May 2018, a customer, named Truong Dinh Cong Vinh, bought a baby girl clothing set worth VND300,000 (US$13.2) at a Con Cung outlet at 788 Au Co Street, Ward 14, Tan Binh District, Ho Chi Minh City.

The product carried a label that read “Con Cung Fashion - Made in Thailand”. However, as he washed the clothes, Vinh found out that this label seemed to be attached after the original tag was removed.

Learning from the Khaisilk scandal, involving a premier Vietnamese silk brand replacing the made-in-China labels for its products with Vietnamese-made tags, Vinh brought the product to Con Cung to make clear about the issue, as well as sent his complaint to competent authorities.

Con Cung’s head of administrative legal department Nguyen Hong Lieu confirmed to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper about the issue on Friday afternoon.

Lieu said that the ‘defective product’ Vinh had purchased belonged to a batch of 9,000 products, and the company has recalled about 4,000 out of them after receiving his complaint.

“There has been no specific data on the number of defective products as our warehouse department has yet to complete their report,” said Lieu, without elaborating as to what the ‘defect’ is.

A customer shops at a Con Cung store in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Tuoi Tre

The company also sent an apology to Vinh and said it will terminate contract with its supplier if more faulty products are detected. It also compensated the customer with a voucher.

At the same time, the legal representative also said that she did not know about the rumor spread widely on Facebook that Con Cung is ‘the second Khaisilk’ as she did not surf the social networking site for the whole day.

Lieu then promised that the company will address all the questions by Tuoi Tre on July 23.

Market administrations also started inspection after the news surfaced.

The Ho Chi Minh City market management division sent a professional unit to verify the information, according to its deputy director Nguyen Van Bach.

Meanwhile, Tran Hung, deputy director of the market surveillance agency under the control of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said that the department will order the market managers in cities and provinces where the store chains has its presence to inspect and handle if any violation is detected.

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