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Summary:Game rules that are too biased towards consumers and too harsh on businesses will also lead to the risk of "bad money driving out good money" in the long run.

Recently, more and more e-commerce merchants have expressed that they are being driven crazy by the "refund only" policy. It is understood that a new group has even emerged online, where novices only need to pay a fee ranging from 28.8 yuan to 298 yuan to join the group, and receive instruction from a specialist on how to "get the money" by complaining to merchants, taking advantage of delivery time differences, and using tactics to deal with customer service.

"Refund only" was originally a service measure first introduced by the Pinduoduo platform, which allows consumers to choose to refund only without returning the goods to the merchant if they are not satisfied or encounter quality problems after purchasing the goods. This policy simplifies the return and exchange process and shows full goodwill to customers, which is understandable. However, since the end of last year, when JD.com and Taobao platforms successively introduced the "refund only" service in the platform dispute handling rules, this rule that favors the interests of the platform has attracted customers while encouraging some consumers to "take advantage of the situation", which has caused many merchants to be "unbearable".

An extreme example is that during the "618" event this year, a women's clothing store had a turnover of about 10 million yuan, but after deducting the "refund only" amount of 3.5 million yuan and the "return refund" amount of 3.8 million yuan, by the end of the event, after deducting various costs, the store had a loss of about 600,000 yuan. Therefore, some merchants who are more serious have chosen to take practical actions to resist the unreasonable "return only" rule.

Recently, the Public Security People's Court of a local court in Guangxi mediated a dispute over "refund only, no return". According to reports, a consumer asked for "refund only" after purchasing a piece of clothing priced at 11.96 yuan online. The merchant believed that "the clothing was of normal size and could be returned and refunded if not satisfied", but the consumer applied for "refund only" to the platform and was approved by the platform. The merchant sued the consumer to the court in anger. After mediation by the presiding judge, the consumer realized that his behavior of "refund only, no return" was contrary to good faith and agreed to refund the 11.96 yuan payment and the 800 yuan related fees incurred in defending his rights. Prior to this, for 12 pairs of socks worth less than 100 yuan, a female online shop owner had driven thousands of miles from Shanghai to Kaifeng, Henan to defend her rights; an online shop owner in Jiangsu sued the buyer because a ceiling lamp priced at more than 30 yuan was maliciously "refunded only" and defended his legitimate rights and interests through litigation.

In the above cases, although the merchants who were more serious about their rights finally obtained good rights protection results, they often paid a price dozens of times the price of the goods themselves, which is "unbearable" for most merchants. The "Regulations on the Implementation of the Consumer Rights Protection Law of the People's Republic of China" implemented on July 1 this year stipulates that consumers should follow the principle of honesty and trustworthiness when returning goods without reason, and shall not use the rules of returning goods without reason to harm the legitimate rights and interests of operators and other consumers. As an important trading platform for Chinese people, Internet e-commerce platforms should pay attention to the negative impact of "refund only" on merchants, balance the demands of merchants and consumers, and rebuild a fair and reasonable online trading order.

On the one hand, faced with the frequent occurrence of "return only" operations and publicly sold "refund only" tutorials, each e-commerce platform should, based on background big data and manual intervention, use a more rigorous method to identify and follow up each "refund only" request, reduce or even eliminate the occurrence of "薅羊毛" (薅羊毛) phenomenon; on the other hand, when "refund only" becomes the "standard" service of major platforms, it is extremely necessary to improve and optimize the details such as "return and refund" and "refund only" so that these rules can improve user satisfaction and stimulate consumption while also considering the reasonable demands of merchants and further optimize the e-commerce business environment.

It is worth mentioning that the game rules that are too biased towards consumers and too harsh on merchants will also lead to the risk of "bad money driving out good money" in the long run, leaving the platform to merchants who "win with low prices", which will ultimately affect consumers. Therefore, only by finding a balance between protecting consumer rights and safeguarding the legitimate interests of merchants can the e-commerce industry embark on the road of high-quality development and help economic development.