Spanish smartphone maker Zetta is under the gun this week as they’re being accused of passing off a Chinese smartphone as their own creation. The Zetta was a welcome product in Extremadura Spain due to the low price tag of €145 EUR in store and €155EUR online ($160USD/$170USD). The Zetta was supposed to be a high end affordable smartphone and people were excited as the phone shipped 1,200 units in the first few weeks. The phone was doing well enough that the company opened seven stores in Extremadura and several other locations across Spain itself.
Over the weekend the news broke that Zetta founders haven’t been forthright about the origins of their high end smartphone. The phone they had been selling was actually a cheaper Xiaomi brand phone which they purchased at a discount and resold for a higher price. The founders simply altered the look of the phone adding some aesthetic differences, most notably the acorn on the back with a bite out of it.
Erik Cui, Antonio Ribera and Juan José Cortés, the brand developers, offered their Zetta Smartphones on their website zettaeuropa.es. In an interview just a few months ago on the regional Canal Extremadura Televisión, Zetta representatives said that “this phone is innovative because there is nothing like it on the market. “We have pampered this phone like it was our child,” they added.
Now that these allegations of a phony phone have surfaced, the company’s website and social media outlets have gone dark.
“Our website is being attacked and is unavailable at this time. We apologize for the inconvenience,” was the latest available message on Facebook from the company. Neither one of the founders could be reached for comment.
The Spanish consumer association Facua, has issued a statement saying that if you purchased one of these phones the company will owe you a refund should you want it.
FACUA pone en conocimiento de @xiaomi el fraude de #Zetta https://t.co/8eekaoFPGb
— FACUA (@facua) October 17, 2016
What do you think about this story? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
[button link=”http://elpais.com/elpais/2016/10/17/inenglish/1476699211_743956.html?id_externo_rsoc=TW_CM” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: El Pais[/button]Last Updated on January 23, 2017.
