Kena tipu di Beijing

If you are going to Beijing and joining a tour there, please beware of this scam. this happens one day before our departure date. From the 'waiting for 'teacher' to give the briefing,the anak tauke story,' anak tauke' showing us the 'special room', the jaw-dropping of the staff when the 'anak tauke' gave us a HUGE discount on the retail price etcs.. it all very similar to the story here, and here. There are also several other similar stories but this two are closest to what we experienced.

 The place where the 'teacher' gave us briefing. They made us wait for sometime...during that time the other workers made a small  talk to us and ask our occupation...trying to guess our disposable income, I think. since I'm always skeptical of  salesperson especially when they are trying to make a sale to you and it is always my principle not to tell salespeople what I do for a living unless it's really necessary, I just play games on my phones instead of joining their small talk.

 This 'anak tauke' call herself Nancy...beware..everyday there will be different people posing as anak tauke.

After the briefing they will bring you to a special room...it looks like a big vault where all their expensive items are displayed...she told us she's  just showing you her father's collection...and in a year they only sell an average of three items...mostly to Dubai customers.

Then they will bring you to another room downstairs and start to sell you other stuff. she started by giving us a gift...this pearl ring was given to each female member of our group..The RRP cost  there? about 198 yuan if i'm not mistaken,..its worth? maybe just a couple of RM I think..

So..she started to give us a HUGE DISCOUNT.... a pearl bracelet from 2000 yuan down to 400 yuan..DH offered to me...I took it. A pearl necklace...from 4000 yuan to 600 yuan..etcs...Then she started with the jade....Those jade bangle from 8000 yuan down to 2000 yuan...DH offered me again but I told him I don't like jade.  Sayang...if you want to spent RM1k worth of jewelry on me, make it a diamond hihihi...

the receipt., I dont know whether the company name was there or not...the name card, address is fake.

A Malaysian chinese couple in our group actually spent RM32k  here buying some jade bangles and a set of zodiac stuff for collection. My MIL also bought a jade bangle here but a much smaller amount than them. 

The next morning, the chinese couple told us that they realized they have been duped and wanted to make  a police report. Since MIL spent quite a substantial amount ( although not as much as the chinese couple), we decided to ask our tour guide to bring us there first thing in the morning. After some thinking, we decided to call our contact who used to work at the embassy in Beijing. He gave us a name, of a Malaysian, Mr L who have worked there for a long time to help us.

This is when we realized our tour guide is also part of the scam!..He refused to give the shop's address to our Mr L. The name card that we forward to Mr L was a fake address. so using technology and our own memory we manged to get Mr L to this shop.

We tried to return the items on our own but were flatly refused. Mr L came and tried to talk to them on our behalf...also failed.  He called the police...the police actually scolded the Chinese couple for actually buying the stuff.."all these for 64K yuan???'

The police asked and scolded our tour guide as well. Even our bus driver was not spared..after the police threaten them by asking Mr L to report to the press if they refused to refund us, they reluctantly agreed....tapi sengaja melambat-lambatkan proses..

Our hero of the day...without his help we couldn't possibly get our money back. 

They also said that if we do not delete Nancy's photo from our phone they are not going to refund... hahaha...I still have her pics anyway....from other group members' phone who did not enter the shop the next day...During the time it took us to get refunded, we saw other tourists coming but a different staff acting as anak tauke.

This shop do not even have a name at the entrance... just that symbol on the above photo..situated inside a stadium (not the birdnest stadium) ..inside the olympic village...no significant landmark..all building nearby looks generic. They will bring you here one day before departure...the next day, when you realized you're probably been conned, you probably wont come back here coz you don't want to miss your flight. But in our case, our flight was late at night, in fact 1am the next day.

A few tips to remember, you can't access google,blogspot, facebook etcs in China...so you probably can't read this if you are in China. In our case...when we tried to look it up there whether this is a scam...we couldn't find much coz mostly it's in blogspot.com.
Do not buy anything that you don't know what it's worth, In fact, to be safe, don't buy anything during the factory/ shop visit. Buy your stuff in the market...Silk Street, Pearl Market etcs..