[ad_1]

By Brontë H. Lacsamana, Reporter

FRAUDULENT web sites claiming to be Swedish house furnishings retailer IKEA have scammed 718 Filipino clients as of March 3, with their transactions collectively reaching P1.4 million, based on Ikea Philippines.

As a sufferer of identification theft, the corporate has filed a grievance towards these web sites with the Philippine Nationwide Police’s (PNP) cybercrime division.

“Ikea is comparatively new within the nation, so these scammers make the most of that,” mentioned Daniel Rivero, Ikea’s retailer supervisor within the Pasay Metropolis department, the corporate’s solely bodily retailer within the Philippines.

“We take this subject very critically. Filipinos have an excellent impression of Ikea, and we need to maintain it that manner,” he informed BusinessWorld at a press convention on March 3.

Greater than 64 web sites have pretended to be linked with the house furnishings large through the use of the Ikea title and emblem. The typical transaction is about P2,000.

Leontina Bucur, Ikea’s nation gross sales supervisor, clarified that their solely official gross sales channel is their web site, ikea.ph.

“We don’t promote on Fb, Instagram, or every other social media or e-commerce platform,” she mentioned. “We additionally don’t provide free supply, which is what these scammers declare.”

The fraudulent web sites peddle merchandise that aren’t even on the Ikea catalog, like baggage, scooters, treadmills, laptops, and wheelchairs.

Each the cybercrime unit of the PNP and the Nationwide Bureau of Investigation, except for trying into Ikea’s grievance, urged the corporate to tell the general public about recognizing faux on-line shops and submitting their very own complaints and inquiries.

“Rip-off victims ought to take authorized motion on the premise of computer-related fraud as a result of, on the finish of the day, they have been those scammed by the perpetrators,” Ikea’s grievance will probably be restricted to computer-related identification theft, not fraud,” Angela M. De Gracia-Cruz, official state counsel of the Division of Justice’s cybercrime workplace, mentioned on the press convention.

Ikea Philippines mentioned the very first report of a rip-off they obtained occurred in June final yr. The sufferer was a buyer who noticed an advert on Fb sporting the Ikea title and emblem and went to the fraudulent web site to position an order, which was by no means delivered.

Shoppers are suggested to be vigilant, subscribe to the official Ikea digital and social media channels, and all the time verify if the web site hyperlink is certainly ikea.ph.

[ad_2]