Weverse Apologizes To GFRIEND’s Fans Regarding The Sudden Conclusion Of Artist Contract And The Leak Of Personal Information
Previously, Weverse had revised their refund policy after fans of GFRIEND had requested cash refunds instead of points. However, they made a fatal mistake and had forgotten to restrict the visibility of the results for the refunds form. This resulted in customers’ personal information being leaked to whoever accesses the form.
Weverse has since issued a sincere apology as of June 11, 2021. In a post titled “Please allow us to express our deepest apology to all fans,” they have explained that the information was only left up for around 9 minutes.
In addition, Weverse has also apologized for their previous mishandling of the refund system for fans and their insufficient response to the feedback. They have also apologized for not being able to provide information regarding the end of GFRIEND’s contract, which came out of the blue.
We deeply regret that deficiencies occurred in providing information regarding the conclusion of artist contract.
Please allow us to offer our sincerest apology for not exercising enough care in providing information regarding the conclusion of artist contract and subsequent measures, and, more importantly, failing to sufficiently understand the sadness and discomfort experienced by fans during this process.
Discussions over the contract continued until its final day and we had insufficient time to organize our positions on a wide range of issues related to the conclusion of contract. However, it was our responsibility to conclude this issue in a sound manner, and we apologize for the deep sense of disappointment we caused to our fans.
— Weverse
Their full apology can be read below.
Hello.
This is Source Music.
We are aware of the range of issues that occurred during the follow-up to the conclusion of our artist contract. Source Music feels a sense of deep responsibility for these issues, and we would like to provide the following message of apology.
We have taken the following steps to address the inadvertent release of personal information.
On June 9, as part of the process of providing information regarding the refund of GFRIEND Memberships and collecting the required information via Google Survey, an error in the access settings resulted in the exposure of the personal information of 22 members for approximately 9 minutes.
As we consign some of our personal information handling process to the platform as part of our membership management, Source Music is obligated to exercise strict management and oversight but failed to do so. We apologize for this negligence. In response to this incident, the error was corrected immediately after it was discovered and a report was filed with the Personal Information Protection Commission. A separate email was sent to the affected members to assist them in preventing further damage that may occur and provide contact information for reporting and discussing any such issues.
We are sorry that we have caused concern to our Membership holders due to this incident. We will improve and augment our internal information protection management procedures to make sure that such breaches never occur again.
In addition, we apologize regarding the Membership refund process.
There were opinions from fans that the refund process as offered by the company was inappropriate. While we belatedly established additional measures after it was pointed out that cash points could not be used effectively and the refund request process was excessively complex, our insufficient response caused further inconvenience. We were compelled to select this refund method because a payment cancellation through the credit card company’s payment gateways was not feasible and due to concerns of transaction errors occurring in a wide-scale refund program with account number errors and other issues. However, it has become clear that this was not an appropriate measure.
There was a series of additional issues that occurred as we provided information regarding the refund. We were lacking in both the assistance we provided through our customer center as well as the process of communicating to our fans. We would like to offer our sincere apology.
We deeply regret that deficiencies occurred in providing information regarding the conclusion of artist contract.
Please allow us to offer our sincerest apology for not exercising enough care in providing information regarding the conclusion of artist contract and subsequent measures, and, more importantly, failing to sufficiently understand the sadness and discomfort experienced by fans during this process.
Discussions over the contract continued until its final day and we had insufficient time to organize our positions on a wide range of issues related to the conclusion of contract. However, it was our responsibility to conclude this issue in a sound manner, and we apologize for the deep sense of disappointment we caused to our fans.
We will carefully heed the opinions from our fans being provided through a variety of channels and do our utmost to bring closure to these issues.
Once again, please allow us to express our deepest apology to fans.
— Weverse
GFRIEND
Share This Post
