"High sugar content," "premium grade," "famous origin."
These are the phrases consumers look at first when choosing fruit gift sets online for holidays or appreciation gifts. But many of these expressions are being used without objective standards, a new survey has found.
The Korea Consumer Agency said Thursday that its review of 240 five-kilogram gift sets of apples, pears and Hallabong citrus sold on four major online shopping platforms — Naver, Coupang, Gmarket and 11st — found that product information was generally inadequate.
According to the survey, 45.0 percent of the products (108 items) used expressions such as "high sugar content" or "sugar-content selected" but did not display the actual Brix value that serves as the benchmark. Without a Brix figure, consumers find it difficult to judge how sweet the fruit will be.
Fruit size labeling was also vague. Some 19.2 percent (46 items) used terms such as "extra-large" or "medium-large" without providing specific weight or size criteria. Expressions such as "premium grade" and "top grade" were also found to be used without objective standards directly linked to agricultural product standards.
Information on the place of origin was also insufficient. Some sales pages simply labeled products as "domestic" or used the phrase "famous origin" without specifying a region. This makes it difficult for consumers to verify the actual origin and quality.
When the Consumer Agency purchased and examined four apple gift sets labeled as "large fruit," the weight of individual apples ranged from a minimum of 216 grams to a maximum of 377 grams, a roughly 1.7-fold difference. Even within the same box, the weight difference between apples reached as much as 58 grams, indicating that sorting standards were not uniform.
Price differences were also significant. For the same five-kilogram fruit gift set, prices differed by between 3.9 and 4.7 times depending on the item. Apples ranged from products in the 30,000 won range to those exceeding 130,000 won, but in many cases, quality information sufficient to explain the price gap was not provided.
Consumer complaints are also rising rapidly. Over the past three years, the 1372 Consumer Counseling Center received a total of 4,556 complaints related to online fruit purchases, increasing by more than 60 percent annually. Of these, more than half — 51.4 percent (2,342 cases) — were quality-related complaints. Typical examples include "the sugar content is lower than advertised," "the size differs from the description," and "the fruit was delivered bruised or moldy."
Complaints related to withdrawal of subscription accounted for 13.3 percent (604 cases), and non-performance of contract made up 12.7 percent (580 cases). Given that consumers cannot directly inspect products when buying online, the importance of providing information is growing, observers noted.
The Korea Consumer Agency said, "Based on the results of this survey, we plan to request that online shopping platform operators provide objective and specific information on the specifications and quality of fruit that serves as the basis for consumers' purchasing decisions," adding that "consumers should carefully check quality-related labeling when buying fruit online."
