In what CEO Martin Tobias described as the company’s first mass refund, Seattle daily deal site Tippr has apologized to customers who bought a pair of what they thought were $49 Bose headsets. Tobias tells GeekWire that a merchant signaled that the headsets were genuine, and that it was authorized to sell them.

But Tippr started to have doubts about the merchant’s claims, and as a result took the step of offering a full refund.

“Upon further investigation and in partnership with Bose Corporation, we were unable to verify the merchant’s inventory levels nor the authenticity of the product to our satisfaction,” Tobias tells GeekWire in an email.  “There are apparently quite good fake versions of these headphones in the market and we were concerned that the merchant may have been attempting to ship knock-offs instead of factory authorized product. So out of a preponderance of caution, and looking out for the interest of our Tippr customers, we decided to refund all customer’s money rather than risk them getting a potentially faulty or poor quality product.”

Tobias said that they take great strides to make sure that the merchandise sold through the site is authentic, noting that the company is pursuing legal action against SwagShopCentral for misrepresentation and breach of contract.

“While it is unfortunate Tippr customers were not able to receive authentic Bose headphones at this great price … this quality assurance service is something that customers should expect from their daily deal providers,” Tobias said. “Customers should be wary of deal sites that don’t have high bars for merchant quality or provide full refunds in the case of merchant misrepresentation or underperformance. Sadly not all companies provide such a high level of service.”

Here’s the letter that was sent to customers:

Dear Customer:

You are receiving this email because you purchased the $49 Bose Headsets – thanks for your patronage!

Our goal is to ensure that the offers and merchants we promote are of the highest standards so that you, our customer, would always receive a quality piece of merchandise or service.  Unfortunately, we demand a level of merchant and product quality and for a few reasons we feel these standards were not met with the Bose offer.  Extended shipping delays and product quality issues have forced us to make the decision to provide you a full refund rather than have a less-than-acceptable product shipped to you.

With that said, we will begin refunding these transactions and it will likely take your bank 3-5 business days to process the transaction. You should see the credit in your account by the beginning of next week.

Thanks again for allowing Tippr to provide you with quality offers, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.

 

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.