Time for Tubby bye bye! Horrified father finds out his son has smashed £3,400 Teletubby sculpture at Hong Kong toy shop… and he has to pay for it
- A boy managed to smash a 5ft 9in porcelain Teletubbies doll in a toy store
- The horrified father was landed with a £3,400 bill to pay for the damages
- The store said the boy had kicked the doll but CCTV showed it was an accident
A Hong Kong father ended up splashing out more than he intended after a trip to the toy store ended in his son smashing a nearly six foot porcelain Teletubby doll.
Furious staff found the 5.9ft golden doll smashed into pieces at a toy shop in Langham Place shopping mall in the Mongkok district of Hong Kong, China, on Sunday May 22.
They checked the store’s CCTV footage and the boy could be seen leaning onto the gold-coloured doll before trying to pull it back from falling.
He was unable to save the giant glittery decorative item and it crashed to the ground.
At the time, the boy’s father, Cheng, was on a call outside the shop but turned back in after hearing a loud smashing sound.
The boy’s dad said: ‘My son was motionless, he was just staring down at the toy. My son was so terrified after the incident that he had to skip school. He asked me why the doll looked scary.’
Believing it was his son’s mistake, Cheng agreed to pay for the doll. The shopkeeper discounted the item from its retail cost of £5,380 and instead charged the cost price of £3,400.
The culprit stares at the damage after a life size porcelain Teletubbies doll is smashed at a Hong Kong designer toy store
The 5.9ft-tall golden doll made smashed into pieces at a toy shop in Langham Place shopping mall in the Mongkok district of Hong Kong, China, on Sunday May 22
However, disgruntled father Cheng said that shop staff had initially told him that his son had kicked the doll but surveillance footage later showed the youngster may have been wrongly accused.
Video showed him leaning against it and knocking the doll over by accident.
The father criticised the shop’s staff for allegedly misleading him and his wife into believing their son had kicked the sculpture.
He later called on the shop to refund the money and claimed they should have protected the doll by labelling it as fragile.
The shop owners, KK Plus, claimed the compensation for the statue had been ‘mutually agreed’.
The father of the boy was landed with a bill equivalent to £3,400 by the toy store, who said they were only charging him ‘cost price’ for the giant Teletubby doll
They said in a statement: ‘The incident was dealt with immediately and completely resolved, and the payment was proposed by the owner.
‘This large-scale decoration is actually a prototype of the first printing. The official pre-sale price is 52,800 HKD (£5,380). The cost of the prototype involves various expenses, including copyright and design, research and development and mould making, reinforcement, packaging, transportation and more.
The decoration is only for viewing and has no toughness to withstand pressure.
‘We did not charge the family more than the cost price of the goods.
CCTV of the incident caused controversy, as although the boy was clearly at fault, the store had originally said the accident was deliberate, but it later proved to be an accident
‘The decoration has been displayed at its current location since November last year and it did not cause any inconvenience to the customers.’
The incident sparked widespread debate on social media over who was ultimately responsible for the damages, with people accusing KKPlus of ripping the father off by falsely saying his son kicked the doll over.
Others questioned why it had not cordoned off the doll to prevent people from coming close to it.
But there were those who said the parents should have kept a closer watch on their son.
Source: Read Full Article
