Following WeMakePrice, which had been conducting on-site refunds due to the ‘unsettled sales price situation’, Timon has also reportedly begun conducting on-site refunds.
Since the morning of the 26th, Timon employees have been accepting refund applications at the new Timon headquarters building in Sinsa-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, and refunds are being processed sequentially.
As of 9:40 AM, refund applications for numbers 400 and above have been completed, and approximately 1,800 people are waiting to be accepted.
Timon plans to take refund measures worth 3 billion won on this day. Timon CEO Ryu Gwang-jin said that he is busy preparing funds for unsettled sales payments and customer refunds.
Kwon Do-wan, head of Timon’s operations division, said, “Quten takes care of all finances, but Timon and WeMakePrice are operated separately,” and “Refunds are also handled with their own funds.”
He added, “Refunds are also being processed with each party’s own funds and are not running smoothly, so more discussion is needed.”
Meanwhile, as refunds were being processed slowly despite the manual application process being ongoing, Timon announced that they would switch to QR application, but as some consumers on site protested, they switched to only those on the waiting list who had not received an application number.
Timon CEO Ryu Gwang-jin said in a press release at around 5:45 PM on the 25th, “Along with providing damage relief, we are working to ease the anxiety of customers and sellers by resuming payments,” and “We will also do our best to resolve the settlement delay.”
Following the WeMakePrice incident on the 25th, when consumers demanding refunds occupied Timon’s headquarters, Timon announced at 1:00 AM on the 26th that it would accept refunds.
In response, hundreds of consumers have flocked to the headquarters since dawn to demand refunds, and protests are pouring in from the victims.
Meanwhile, WeMakePrice has started giving priority refunds to customers who have paid for travel products, and it has been reported that about 2,000 customers have received refunds so far.
As of 9 p.m. the previous day, it was reported that around 1,400 people had received refunds, but hundreds more successfully received refunds overnight.
At first, it started out by manually receiving customer information and depositing it into the account, which was somewhat slow, but starting at 10:00 AM the previous day, the system was changed to inputting customer information using QR codes, which speeded up computer processing.
WeMakePrice reported that on-site refund processing was almost complete and began accepting online refunds at 5 AM that day, but customers waiting to receive their refunds protested, and the police deployed personnel to prepare for any contingencies.
However, it is expected that the delay in refunds will continue for the time being as it is difficult to apply for refunds through the customer center, application, or website due to the long waiting list.
Meanwhile, there are concerns that the refund delays may spread to the entire Quten Group, as claims have been raised that refunds are not being processed at Wish, an e-commerce platform based in North America and Europe that Quten acquired for 230 billion won in cash in February.
As the situation worsens, the founder of Quten, the parent company and the person responsible for causing this situation, Koo Young-bae, has yet to show up. It is known that Koo recently entered Korea to resolve the issue, but it is also unknown whether he is still in the country.
Source: www.nextdaily.co.kr
