Sale or deception? Khaadi accused of cheating customers

A customer claimed that the brand "increased their prices before offering a promotion"

All is not well when leading brands plan to offer a discount on their coveted collections.

Last year saw a few cat fights and broken doors and this year's sales are naturally, in the news again.

Deemed to be one of the biggest sales in Pakistan, Khaadi's End of Season Sale campaign received a severe backlash on social media when a customer shared a picture of a misleading price tag.

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Yasir Tanveer claimed that one of the top brands of the country is apparently deceiving its customers by "increasing the prices before offering a promotion."

Yasir bought a kurta and a duppatta from the DHA Y Block, Lahore store.  His post stated that the item was initially for Rs 5000 but the sale price, on which the discount was being offered, was increased up to Rs 7500.



The picture instantly went viral calling all loyal Khaadi customers to boycott the brand.

All the ladies who almost spent 4-5 hours at #Khaadi yesterday is now coomplaining abt the fake price & sale. Bechary. Khaadi ne shi loota

— Fasih ur Rehman (@FasihTanoli) August 1, 2016

https://twitter.com/sanaakhann/status/759792412055048193

For all the sale freaks! #Khaadi pic.twitter.com/vRQamaTLss

— LookingForHope (@Qurat_ul_ainn) July 31, 2016

But since there is always another side of the story, we reached out to Khaadi to find out if they were indeed cheating their customers with misleading price tags.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, Tahir, the Marketing Manager of Khaadi, clarified their mistake saying, "The price of the kurta was Rs 5000, whereas the price of the kurta and duppatta was Rs 7500."

"Khaadi has received above 300,000 customers over the weekend and sold up to 200,000 items. It was a cumbersome job for a staff of about 12-15 salespersons to handle thousands of customers at a time."

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"Due to heavy traffic, the staff couldn't get time to remove the wrong tags and pasted the original price tags over them. We didn't have any ill intention behind it."

"It was a human error and quite unfortunate one because Khaadi has never tried to mislead its customers and we are grateful to them for making our sales the biggest one."

A big THANK YOU to you all for your overwhelming response to the Season End Sale! pic.twitter.com/OWW0rooPk1

— Khaadi (@Khaadi) August 1, 2016

Tahir further said that it's hard to convince customers due to a number of pasted tags. "One of the reasons we place a tag over a tag is because of the changed the barcode."

"We have stores in six different countries so sometimes if an item designed for UAE comes to a local store, we have to paste a new tag to state the price in rupees."



Further ensuring brand loyalty, Tahir said, "Our warehouse is always open for our customers. They can come and audit themselves as we promise we have never done anything with ill intention."

Tahir also said that they have addressed the complainant's issue by clarifying their stance.

Yasir later took to Facebook to apologise for the misunderstanding on his part.



Happy shopping, guys!

Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly reported 3000 customers and 2000 sales.

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