Mac Marketing Solutions, a Vancouver based real estate firm in Canada, has apologized for manipulating a news story that showed two of its employees posing as potential apartment buyers from China. The story was aired on CTV and CBS, Thursday, Feb 14 and claimed that apartment sales always hiked up during the Chinese lunar year in Vancouver.
The scam was exposed when suspicious bloggers identified the two women to be employees at MAC Marketing solutions. It was later discovered that the two were not Chinese and not even related.
In an interview for the story, the two employees posed as Chinese sisters, named Chris and Amanda Lee. They told the reporter that they were looking forward to buying an apartment in Vancouver as 'Chinese like to buy during this time.' They also added that their parents were flying in to help them buy a condo.
"We were certainly surprised to learn that two people our reporter approached, who told us they were shopping for a condo, were in fact employees of the company. We are doing a follow up story," Ethan Faber, managing editor at CTV, told The Province.
While speculations and criticism of the story have been spreading, Cameron McNeil, President of MAC Marketing, said that he was deeply apologetic about the wrong portrayal and took full responsibility for the embarrassing incident.
"I regret very much that we are in this situation and that we were not forthright about the two young women featured in the story and their association with MAC.
"I don't know all the details about what precisely happened that day. I want to get to the bottom of this. I don't know if it was an overzealous employee or if this happened in a formalized way," McNeil told The Vancouver Sun.
He also added that he was out of town when the incident happened and hopes to understand how the incident happened, reports CTV News.
Some experts have called the scam a publicity stunt. However, the incident could damage the company's reputation as well.
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