Earlier this month Sephora announced they were having a 20% sale for their most loyal customers. You can imagine the chaos this would cause, of all the make-up addicts around the world were preparing for this big event. With discounts on products such as the noted Dior BB cream and Naked eye shadow palette it was an event not to be missed.
Unfortunately when the sale started, the mass amount of online traffic crashed the site. With this the site deactivated or locked out numerous Sephora shopper’s accounts.
Once the website was up and running later that day, allegations started pouring in, as numerous customers complained about racial profiling against their email addresses. The lawsuit was filed by four women —Xiao Xiao, Man Xu, Jiali Chen and Tiantian Zou—against Sephora and LVMH (who own the beauty giant). The women claim that the beauty retailer discriminated against anyone “of perceived Chinese/Asian descent based on the ill-founded and discriminatory belief that all Chinese/Asian customers abuse discount sales to engage in bulk purchase for re-sale.”
LVMH denied the accusations, and stated: “This lawsuit significantly distorts the facts in this matter. We look forward to defending our actions in court,” the statement said. “Among other points, we intend to make very clear that clients from a number of countries around the world have been impacted by a temporary block we needed to place on accounts in order to restore the functionality of our site during a surge of activity by resellers during a promotional event two weeks ago.”
While it is still not clear whether Sephora was targeting these customers, they have got a big issue on their hands and a lot of explaining to do.
