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The "refund only" service of e-commerce platforms has always been controversial. On the one hand, it seems to better protect the rights of consumers and make the platform's reputation "skyrocket"; on the other hand, it has also spawned a large number of "wool parties" who seek improper benefits. In order to change this situation, Taobao will make a series of adjustments to the "refund only" service from August 9. According to the new regulations, high-quality merchants will not be actively intervened by the platform to ask for "refund only".

According to the announcement released by Taobao, the "refund only" service will be optimized, including upgrading the abnormal behavior recognition model for "refund only" for received goods, and rejecting "refund only" requests with abnormal behavior. In addition, Taobao will reduce or cancel after-sales intervention for high-quality stores.

Specifically, for merchants whose store comprehensive experience score is not less than 4.8 points, the platform will not actively intervene through Wangwang to support the "refund only" behavior after receiving the goods, but will encourage merchants to negotiate with consumers first. In other words, the higher the experience score, the greater the merchant's disposal power. At the same time, Taobao has also optimized the "refund only" appeal link. When a merchant initiates an appeal, the platform will ask a third-party testing agency to conduct random inspections on the products. If the inspection passes, the platform will compensate the merchant for the loss.

The reporter also learned that Taobao's upgraded "refund only" recognition model not only enhances the recognition of abnormal behaviors such as abnormally high "refund only", returning empty packages with few items, and refunds for high-frequency counterfeit products, but also pays close attention to unreasonable refund behaviors, cracks down on "wool parties", and protects the legitimate rights and interests of honest merchants.

In recent years, with the rapid development of online shopping and fierce competition among major e-commerce platforms, e-commerce platforms’ rules such as “no-reason return”, “quick refund”, and “refund only” to maximize convenience for consumers have become an important competitive means to attract consumers.

However, services like "refund only" have been used by some "wool parties", damaging the rights and interests of some normal business operators. For example, some consumers asked for a refund for a lipstick they bought two years ago, and even received a false dog death certificate after buying dog food, and applied for a "refund only". Such malicious refunds have made some businesses miserable. Previously, there was an incident where "a short-sleeved shirt worth 9.9 yuan was only refunded, and a Zhejiang seller did not hesitate to travel more than a thousand kilometers from Yiwu to the buyer to seek justice." Some businesses even paid high rights protection fees and took buyers suspected of malicious refunds to court.

So, why did the rules that were originally meant to protect consumer rights change? In fact, this rule is based on the premise that both parties are "gentlemen" and honest people. Regarding the "refund only" rule, some consumers said that this can effectively dissuade bad merchants and protect the interests of consumers; however, some consumers believe that since the platform stipulates that "refund only" can be selected after receiving the goods, the rule can be used reasonably. But from the perspective of merchants, this rule is not fair. If they are asked to refund unilaterally, they will lose both money and goods. Who will make up for their losses?

In addition, some consumers said that it was precisely because some speculators took advantage of the loopholes in this rule to fleece merchants that the frequent "refund only" applications by some speculators led to a decline in product quality, and merchants ignored customer experience in order to save costs. Many merchants admitted: "If the rights of sellers cannot be guaranteed, the shopping environment of the platform will also deteriorate." Some industry insiders said that the current "refund only" rules of various platforms are causing dissatisfaction among both consumers and merchants.

The original intention of the platform to set up "refund only" is to assume governance responsibilities and provide better rights protection for consumers. However, if this extensive "refund only" strategy increases the cost burden of merchants, these costs will eventually be passed on to consumers through the price transmission mechanism, thereby damaging consumers' rights and shopping experience.

So, is the behavior of "薅羊毛" taking advantage of loopholes or illegal? How can the platform plug the "evil" loopholes that induce people to take shortcuts and balance the interests of buyers and sellers? Lawyer Yue Xuefei said in an interview with a Knews reporter that a service contract relationship is formed between the platform and the merchant, and a sales contract relationship is formed between the consumer and the merchant. All these contractual relationships must follow some basic principles of the contract stipulated by the law. For example: the principles of equality, voluntariness, fairness, integrity and law-abidingness. The platform sets a "refund only" clause, and the starting point itself is good, but the premise is that consumers themselves must also follow the principles of fairness and integrity in the contract.

Yue Xuefei said that deliberately exploiting loopholes in the rules to "take advantage of others" is not only dishonorable, but may also be suspected of being illegal. Such seemingly advantageous "taking advantage of others" and "buying more and returning less" may be suspected of being illegal and even fraud. According to the Public Security Administration Punishment Law, those who defraud public or private property shall be detained for not less than five days and not more than ten days, and may be fined not more than 500 yuan; if the circumstances are serious, they shall be detained for not less than ten days and not more than fifteen days, and may be fined not more than 1,000 yuan.

In Yue Xuefei's opinion, for online shopping, relevant laws have stipulated a 7-day unconditional return policy, which is considered from the perspective of protecting consumer rights. The reason why the platform has introduced the "refund only" rule is actually to gain an advantage in the competition with other platforms and attract more consumers to consume on its own platform. However, this method harms the interests of merchants. In the long run, merchants will also be dissatisfied with this and switch to other platforms.

Yue Xuefei said that Taobao's adjustment to the "refund only" service this time can be said to be in the hope of reaching a balance point, but the specific effect needs to be implemented for a period of time before it can be evaluated. E-commerce platforms can tend to protect consumers, but they should pay more attention to fairness and rationality, and plug the "evil" loopholes that induce people to take shortcuts. For example, corresponding permissions can be set according to the credit level of buyers, and buyers with good reputation can fully enjoy various conveniences such as refunds and returns. At the same time, artificial intelligence and big data technologies are used to comprehensively analyze user behavior patterns and automatically warn of "wool-pulling" behaviors. By identifying abnormal purchasing behaviors, frequently refunded accounts, abnormal IP addresses and device characteristics, high-risk "refund only" requests can be intercepted in a timely manner, and the "refund only" threshold for specific accounts can be limited or increased, so as to balance the interests of buyers and sellers, reduce dishonesty, and create a fairer consumer environment.

Kankan News Reporter: Peng Xiaoyan, Chen Yuhui, You Wei

Editor: Chen Yuhui You Wei

Editor: Peng Xiaoyan