Both Samsung and LG were slapped with a fine of $35 million recently. There you have it. End of the story! Nah, just kidding. Let’s see why the industry’s leading companies were fined.

It just so happens that the guys at China found out that LG and Samsung were fixing prices for their LCD panels. According to Yonhap, a News Agency that I don’t know about that much, LG was fined $18.6 million, while Samsung was fined $16.2 million.

But the good part of this story is that while Samsung and LG were being fined for LCD price fixing, some other companies took the shot too. The following Taiwanese companies were fined for LCD and product price fixing as well. They are all Taiwanese:

• AU Optronics

• Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd.

• HannStar Display

• Chi Mei Optoelectronics

Combined, all six companies had to bear a loss of $56 million to fines. They were accused for fixing prices, as told by the Chinese government. The Chinese law firms “convinced” these display panel manufacturers to offer $27 million in refunds to small time retailers and shopkeepers that they had been screwing around with, since 2001.

One of the officials at ‘National Development and Reform Commission’ said, “Those involved, tuned out to have negotiated prices or manipulated prices, hence hampering the legitimate rights and interests of other parties and consumers.”

Samsung and LG, after this shameful experience, have promised to abide by Chinese law. To both of these companies, the incident was nothing but a “bunch of technical and communication related problems” which led to overpricing their clients.

Four years ago, LG, Chunghwa Picture Tubes and Sharp were found guilty for price fixing. They should have learned a lesson after being fined a hefty sum of $585 million. But as you can see, they went back to the same old habit of ripping off people, distributors, retailers and anyone who had to do anything with purchasing the companies’ products. 

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2013 at 11:53 PM and is filed under National News, Samsung. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.