14 DAY TRIAL // Kunming, the capital and largest city of Yunnan in Southwest China, houses several Apple Retail Store rip-offs, some of which even dupe their staff into believing they work for Cupertino.
You read that right. A blogger living in the aforementioned Chinese province took it upon herself to expose the fraudulent stores.
After convincing one of the store’s security guards that she was not a reporter, Jessica took pictures of the fake outlet and went as far as to interview the employees.
Describing the establishment on her blog, Jessica (BirdAbroad) wrote:
“It looked like an Apple store. It had the classic Apple store winding staircase and weird upstairs sitting area. The employees were even wearing those blue t-shirts with the chunky Apple name tags around their necks.”
The name tags, however, did not bear actual names, but only the generic term ‘staff’, one of the first indicators that something was rotten in Kunming.
As she toured the store, Jessica also started noticing architectural flaws, including banners that actually read “Apple Store”, something the real company selling Macs and iPods never does.
The Apple logo alone is good enough for Steve Jobs & Co.
“…we struck up some conversation with these salespeople who, hand to God, all genuinely think they work for Apple,” Jessica added.
After repeated unanswered calls to the Kunming store manager, a high-profile media outlet was able to reach one of the employees by phone.
The salesman who agreed to talk reportedly said the products in the store were genuine, not rip-offs. They were (and still are) sold at the same prices as Apple’s.
The employee also revealed he was not under the illusion that he worked for Steve Jobs’ boys, but added that “It doesn’t make much of a difference for us whether we’re authorized or not.”
“I just care that what I sell every day are authentic Apple products, and that our customers don’t come back to me to complain about the quality of the products,” the staffer reportedly said.