The Beijing Morning Post reported that the official sponsor of the French National Team,  the Chinese company Vatti, had announced on Tuesday July 24 that the refunds they promised to customers who bought their designated products during the 2018 FIFA World Cup was going as planned and that they were realizing their promises. 

Recently, there have been many comments from the media and public saying that Vatti were not fulfilling the promise they made about fully refunding certain designated Vatti products if France won the World Cup. Beijing Morning Post says that the China Consumers Association announced on July 20 on Weibo that they had received 73 complaints relevant to Vatti within 24 hours and they had sent letters to e-retailing platforms such as Suning, Jingdong, Tmall and Gome to learn about the situation. 

However, Vatti have been publishing refund updates via Weibo. According to the latest update posted by Vatti on their official Weibo account, as of 10pm July 24, they had replied to 6,378 online requests and had given back shopping cards worth CNY23.01m, to customers which was 79.3% of the total requests. Regarding their physical stores, up to 9pm on July 24, there had been 8,946 registered requests and they had finished refunding 6,433, (71.9% of the total requests) with a total cash value of CNY33.24m. 

Since France won the World Cup Russia, Vatti’s refund promise made in their World Cup marketing campaign has been a hot topic in China. People wondered whether the refund would be a disaster for Vatti’s business. However, it was later understood that Vatti would not suffer from these refunds at all because the profits would be large enough for them to cover any loss as a result of the refunds. 

According to the Beijing Morning Post, Vatti says the cause of some complaints were sometimes because some rules were not explained clearly and some customers did not meet the standards to receive a refund. For example, some people did not buy the designated products or did not buy within the time period designated by the campaign. 

Being the focus of public attention and with the involvement of relevant authorities such as the China Consumers Association and Vatti actively reacting, these refunds should be able to achieve great results.

Reference: Beijing Morning Post 

Proofread by Raymond Fitzpatrick