The Taiwanese branch of Chinese handset maker Xiaomi Corp (小米) apologized yesterday after being fined NT$600,000 (US$19,980) by the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) for rounding up sales figures of its low-cost Redmi smartphones.
“We sincerely apologize for causing public inconvenience and misunderstanding,” Xiaomi Taiwan said on its Facebook page, referring to the slight discrepancy between actual sales and the numbers it announced.
The company said it has revised its purchasing rules based on Taiwanese regulations in a bid to improve service quality and offer a better shopping experience to consumers.
Earlier in the day, the commission ruled that Xiaomi Taiwan had violated the Fair Trade Act (公平交易法) by misrepresenting data in which claimed it had sold 10,000 Redmi phones in Taiwan within nine minutes, 50 seconds of them going on sale on Dec. 9 last year.
They also said they had sold 10,000 units in 68 seconds on Dec. 16 and said another 8,000 within 25 seconds on Dec. 23.
The numbers are slight exaggerations from the actual sales, which the FTC found came out to 9,339 phones, 9,492 phones and 7,389 phones in the three sales respectively.
The FTC said Xiaomi Taiwan’s decision to close online sales with some Redmi phones still in its inventory also curtailed consumers’ ability to purchase them.
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