By Chris Chang, posted Mar 5, 2010 at 1:32 AM, 1,196 views,

Man Got Fooled of Buying Laptop Through Chinese TV Shopping Commercial

This is interesting. A Chinese man purchased a laptop through a Chinese TV shopping commercial which is doing an attractive promotion, buy a $1680 RMB laptop built-in with Wi-Fi and get three things in return, free internet access, an Apple iPhone, and a digital camera. Later? He became a dupe.

Here’s the situation. The Chinese Man, Liu Xia, got motivated about the free internet access through Wi-Fi so he called the retailer to confirm about it. Then, he made the deal of giving payment when the package reached his house.

After 5 days, the package arrived but Liu Xia is out for work. His Mum helped him to pick up but didn’t check it since it requires the buyer’s identity card to verify. Liu Xia’s mum doesn’t know anything about computers so she waited for her son to come back for unboxing and hands-on. However, the laptop only shows a Windows CE boot screen when Liu Xia switched on the machine. He called for help through the customer hotline and the answer he got is just ‘The laptop can be used while charging.’

What Liu Xia got in return is a MacBook Air knockoff which only shows Windows CE boot screen when powered on. The packaging box is printed with big words saying ‘Simplified Computer’ and a customer hotline number. He is also not happy with the free Apple iPhone since it’s a clone which can only make phone calls. Also, the free digital camera shoots photos with only 64MB of storage available.

Comments from Liu Xia’s Mum:

If this laptop works out of the box, it could be a toy for my grandson. However, we got an object which is not even worth to be called as a toy, for $1700 RMB. I hope the government could put a stop on these fake TV shopping commercials.

It seems that there are lots of Chinese citizens got fooled with this particular TV shopping commercial and they have made complaints on the internet and local newspapers. [Sina]