Sephora denied Wednesday that it had discriminated against Asian consumers during their Insiders online sale, which ran from Nov. 6 through 10.
“This lawsuit significantly distorts the facts in this matter,” a Sephora spokeswoman said Wednesday evening. “We look forward to defending our actions in court. 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.”
Four Sephora customers — Xiao Xiao, Tiantian Zou, Jiali Chen and Man Xu — filed a class action suit individually and on behalf of all other similarly situated individuals Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that Sephora blocked or deactivated the accounts of customers perceived Chinese/Asian descent “based on the ill-founded and discriminatory belief that all Chinese/Asian customers abuse discount sales to engage in bulk purchasing for resale.” The filing invoked violations of 42 US C Section 1981 and 41 U.S. C. Section 1982 and alleges that the company is within breach of customer contracts.
Related Articles
The plaintiffs named both Sephora USA and its parent company, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, in the suit.
You May Also Like
The suit states that the Sephora Web site crashed on Nov. 6, and that on Nov. 7, Sephora posted a statement on its Facebook page, saying that the Web site malfunctioned due to “high levels of bulk buys for reselling purposes in North America and other countries.” What the suit alleges, however, is that Sephora only blocked or deactivated VIB and VIB Rouge insiders associated with e-mail addresses of Chinese-Asian national origin regardless of the Web domain used, as well as users using Web domains originating in China-Asia, including interalia, qq.com, 126.com and 163.com. The suit alleges that close to 95 percent of the blocked and deactivated accounts belonged to individuals residing in the U.S.
All Beauty Insider points of the affected consumers were wiped away, the suit continues. The suit requests both compensory and punitive damages from Sephora, as well as a reinstatement in the Beauty Insider program and attorneys’ fees.