Sephora is facing a discrimination class action lawsuit, alleging that the LVMH-owned retailer deactivated thousands of Asian customer accounts because it believed that the owners were taking advantage of exclusive discounts in order to bulk-buy products and re-sell them at a profit.
According to the plaintiffs, shoppers were unable to purchase goods during a promotional event last year because their Beauty Insider accounts had been deactivated by Sephora on the basis of their Asian sounding names.
“As we have said before, the allegations in this lawsuit are untrue and the claims are entirely without merit. In fact, clients from many countries around the world, including the US were impacted by the temporary outage of the company’s website during a promotional event last year. Sephora would never engage in any form of discrimination with respect to its clients, and it looks forward to full exoneration in this lawsuit,” the company revealed in a statement.
This is not the first time that Sephora’s exclusive promotional events have backfired. In August, a bungled giveaway spawned a mass consumer protest, prompting shoppers to return stock they had purchased from the retailer en masse.
