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First, he took a 9-hour train from Yiwu to Weihai for a 9.9 yuan short-sleeved shirt, and then he drove from Shanghai to Kaifeng, Henan to request a return of 12 pairs of socks.

E-commerce bosses are no longer going to tolerate “refund only”.

Recently, the Public Security People's Court of Zhongshan County People's Court in Hezhou City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, quickly mediated a dispute caused by the buyer's "refund but no return" after online shopping.

In April this year, a buyer bought a piece of clothing for 11.96 yuan on a shopping platform. After receiving it, he was not satisfied and asked the merchant for a "refund only". After the merchant's customer service said "return and refund if not satisfied", the buyer still insisted on "refund only", and then the e-commerce platform processed the order based on big data and only refunded it.

This time, the merchant did not swallow his anger, but chose to take the buyer to court.

After the case was accepted, because the amount involved was relatively small, after mediation, the buyer Wu agreed to refund the payment of 11.96 yuan and bear the 800 yuan related expenses incurred by the seller for this rights protection.

E-commerce bosses have suffered from “refund only” for a long time.

A T-shirt that costs 9.9 yuan and includes free shipping only makes a profit of 0.5 to 0.7 cents. If a T-shirt is "refunded only" once, the merchant must sell at least 10 more pieces to make up for the loss of this order.

This rule, which was originally intended to crack down on unscrupulous merchants and facilitate after-sales service for customers, has gradually changed. After tasting the sweetness of "buying for free", some buyers have become uncontrollable and have formed organized and strategic "wool parties", and can even make a living from this illegal industry.

When loopholes are found in a rule, the rule should be reviewed again.

The "Interim Provisions on Anti-Unfair Competition on the Internet" issued by the State Administration for Market Regulation will be implemented on September 1. The regulations comprehensively sort out unfair competition behaviors on the Internet. Among them, Article 24 stipulates that platforms shall not use service agreements, transaction rules and other means to impose unreasonable restrictions or impose unreasonable conditions on transactions, transaction prices and transactions with other operators within the platform.

Based on this, some e-commerce platforms have recently begun to relax their "refund only" policy.

But will the history of “refund only” come to an end?

1. Sellers are not favored. Is the platform biased?

"Refund only" originated from Amazon in the United States. A few years ago, Amazon began to add the "refund without return" service to its after-sales policy, aiming to encourage consumers to place orders by reducing the return process, while using market forces to screen merchants.

On the one hand, this mechanism can increase merchants' revenue by increasing the order volume. On the other hand, it can also effectively crack down on merchants selling counterfeit and shoddy products and improve the overall quality of the platform's products.

At the beginning, the original intention of domestic e-commerce platforms to introduce this rule was to make shopping more convenient for consumers and reduce the time cost of customer service communication. At the same time, as the competition among domestic platform e-commerce platforms becomes increasingly fierce, this method can also be used to attract more consumers to retain and snatch user resources.

During this year's 618 period, "refund only" has become the "standard configuration" of the top four e-commerce platforms, with even greater enforcement force.

The most direct way is for the platform to intervene in the refund process, actively guiding consumers to "refund only", and at the same time banning merchants.

At first, merchants could see a pop-up window with a refund option on the customer service page. Later, it became unknown when the platform would pop up an official assistant to remind buyers that they could choose "refund only" and ban merchants from the refund only prompt box. In addition, on some e-commerce platforms, the recognition of refund only needs is done by artificial intelligence. As long as the keyword is triggered during communication with the merchant, a refund only link will appear. A refund can be successfully made with just one click, without proof.

Sometimes, when the merchant and the consumer are communicating about compensation, the system will automatically pop up a full refund.

The implementation of such a process sends a signal that "the platform favors buyers". It gives some buyers the confidence to deliberately trigger platform intervention or threaten sellers with negative reviews and only refund. In order to avoid negative reviews, many merchants have to pay compensation.

Another reason is that if the merchant does not recognize the refund and files an appeal, more costs will be wasted.

When the platform approves the consumer's refund-only application, the merchant can also appeal to the platform, but compared with the buyer's "fully automatic refund", it takes more time for the merchant to appeal and it may not be successful.

An e-commerce customer service representative complained, “I did nothing all day and just processed 10 refunds.” Spending time on handling complaints means that there is insufficient manpower for pre-sales consultation, which reduces service quality and affects operations.

But at the same time, some customers also feel that the refund-only prompt that automatically pops up when the platform intervenes will cause them trouble.

Many customers believe that even though they have not described the problems with the product, a prompt for a refund without return will pop up, and the platform is suspected of inducing customers to only get a refund. Some customers also said that they originally wanted to return or exchange the product, but the return operation location was not easy to find, and the method of only getting a refund without return is more convenient.

But this is not a good thing for customers.

Not every customer who uses the "refund only" policy does so intentionally, but every "refund only" policy will actually cause losses to the seller. Frequent platform intervention and guidance for refunds have made sellers nervous for a long time, and some merchants will indiscriminately attack customers who use the "refund only" policy, even to the point of threatening and intimidating them.

Customers followed the guidance and used the powers granted by the platform, and they seemed to have done nothing wrong; merchants lost control of their emotions again and again because they did not accept returns but only refunded the goods and bore the losses, and there were reasons for this; the platform wanted to make after-sales issues more efficient, so it used artificial intelligence to intervene, and there was nothing wrong with this original intention.

But who was to blame for the consequences in the end?

2、To vent his anger, he spent tens of thousands of yuan to get back a bag of dog food

Liu Xiaoping is one of the first e-commerce bosses to file lawsuits against buyers who simply refunded their money. He also has an online nickname that is more familiar to e-commerce bosses, called "Dust Settled", and is known as "Suing Brother".

Liu Xiaoping is a blogger on a short video platform. He has changed several accounts due to frequent complaints and account blockages, but each new account has more than 100,000 followers. At the most, he had nearly 300,000 followers.

Until 2021, Liu Xiaoping was just a small boss running an e-commerce store, selling dog food online.

As a pet food store, in order to reduce customer complaints, Liu Xiaoping will include a 1-pound sample bag in a 10-pound bag of dog food. He also reminds customers to give the dog the sample bag first. If they are not satisfied, they can return the regular bag and the sample bag will be considered a gift.

This is a foolproof strategy, but it is always exploited by those who love to take advantage of opportunities.

One claimed that the package was intact, but after returning it, it was found that only a little over one pound was left; another claimed that the puppy died after eating the dog food and asked for a refund, but the death certificate was photoshopped... The series of refund disputes made Liu Xiaoping very angry. He spent nearly 10,000 yuan in lawyer fees to sue two customers, and in the end the customers had to pay compensation.

Although the final compensation was not enough to cover the lawyer's fees, Liu Xiaoping still felt relieved when he won the case. He made a video of the process and result of the judgment and posted it online, which received 8 million views. Many sellers with similar experiences left messages under his video, hoping to seek help.

After becoming an overnight success, Liu Xiaoping discovered that the number of merchants like him who were troubled by unreasonable refunds was not a few hundred or a few thousand, but tens of thousands.

Therefore, Liu Xiaoping decided to create a special account to share cases of prosecuting "cash-back gangs" and provide legal advice to businesses.

Soon, more and more merchants approached Liu Xiaoping. Liu Xiaoping had dozens of groups on his social media platform, each with a maximum of 500 members. They were all merchants who were frustrated by the "refund only" policy. They shared their litigation experiences and gave each other advice. Sometimes, when Liu Xiaoping received help from a merchant, he would drive to confront the buyer himself.

Soon, Liu Xiaoping came up with an idea. He wanted to establish a business mutual aid association and build a fair community to fight against the platform's rules.

The operating model of the Merchant Mutual Aid Association is very simple. When a merchant is "refund only", he can find a local merchant through the mutual aid association to contact the buyer for communication and negotiation.

It is very simple to join the Merchant Mutual Aid Association. You only need to register with your real name on the website, leave a certificate of opening of your own store, and provide the scope of help you can provide. You can then receive 2 points and become a member of the mutual aid association.

Liu Xiaoping introduced in his short video account that asking for help in the merchant mutual aid association will consume points, but the recharge of points is free, and asking for help is also a free service. It is a purely public welfare project. If you want to get more points, you need to "take orders" to help other merchants.

Someone once suggested to Liu Xiaoping that a reward system could be used to encourage more merchants to participate. But he felt that this would change the nature of the mutual aid association and turn it into a highly utilitarian platform in the long run. He did not want to make a profit from the mutual aid association, and he established the mutual aid association because he hated the "freeloaders".

Generally speaking, when merchants implement "mutual assistance in taking orders", Liu Xiaoping will provide a set of scripts and processes to deter "freeloader" buyers while ensuring that the "mutual assistance" behavior is legal.

According to the rules formulated by Liu Xiaoping, after receiving a request for help, local merchants will first sign a debt transfer agreement with the party seeking help to ensure that the original seller formally transfers the debt to the local merchant.

Then, local merchants can communicate with buyers by phone. Liu Xiaoping particularly emphasized that the communication process should be in the local dialect and must be relaxed and friendly, such as "Hello, do you have time tonight? I would like to invite you to have a drink and talk about the products you bought in our store before." In fact, as he expected, most of the communication can be solved through such phone calls.

However, with the increase in the number of "freeloaders", the number of businesses in need of mutual assistance is also increasing, and Liu Xiaoping feels more pressured to verify the authenticity of these businesses.

His team, including himself, consists of only three people, but there are tens of thousands of merchants in the mutual aid society, and hundreds of new help orders are received every day. These users and content must undergo strict review, otherwise it will easily lead to vicious social problems.

Although it was hard work, Liu Xiaoping and the merchants in the mutual aid association felt very satisfied. Although the amount of money recovered was not much, the feeling of justice released the frustration that had been suppressed for a long time and restored their value and dignity as sellers.

3、"Sheep-pulling" breeds evil flowers, and refunds have become an industrial chain

When the "refund only" rule was first introduced, it did not actually cause dissatisfaction among merchants, because there were only a few "freeloaders" who deliberately refunded goods without returning them, and this could not form a scale effect.

But now the situation is much more complicated. From the elderly who can't walk to primary school students, "professional wool party" is almost everywhere.

According to Dragon TV, in March this year, a buyer requested a refund for a pet cat he bought for 220 yuan. The merchant Xiao Xiong drove 300 kilometers to confront the buyer and found that the buyer was actually a sixth-grade elementary school student.

After checking the child's refund record, Xiao Xiong found that he had used the same method to make more than 20 refund operations, including but not limited to snacks, clothing, shoes and socks, with the highest amount being 350 yuan.

Some people even spend money to learn how to get a refund only.

Liu Xiaoping once shared a case where a fan wanted him to find out who the buyer who only refunded the money was. Liu Xiaoping went through many mountain roads and came to a village, and found that the other party was an old man who ran a small shop.

He took the old man's phone and found that the shopping records were all refund-only orders, and all refunds were successful. Fifty or sixty orders included various daily necessities, including starch worth 48 yuan, which was successfully refunded with a simple statement of poor quality.

Liu Xiaoping questioned him: You are so old, why would you just ask for a refund?

The old man said, I learned it online and I paid 100 yuan.

▲Photo: Screenshot of Liu Xiaoping's media interview

Someone has packaged the "refund only" operation process into a tutorial and sold it, claiming that it is guaranteed to teach you until you learn it, and the price is 5 yuan. It not only includes text tutorials, image analysis, video recording, but also how to edit pictures, communication skills for customer service call back, etc.

Practitioners in the illegal industry spread screenshots of folders through forums, shopping groups, and short video platforms to obtain illegal income.

There is another mainstream way to make a profit from product returns - by taking advantage of freight insurance.

If you buy a product with free shipping insurance, you can get a compensation of about 8 to 12 yuan if you apply for a return after it arrives. However, if the actual shipping cost is only between 4 and 6 yuan, you can make half of the profit from this order.

An industrial chain has been formed by arbitrageurizing the difference between freight insurance compensation and actual express delivery fees.

On social platforms, you can easily search for public accounts that teach people how to send express at low prices. Since most of the wool party places false orders, the weight does not exceed the first weight, and the freight is generally no more than 5 yuan. There are even professional insurance fraudsters who build warehouses and return goods, and they earn tens of thousands to tens of millions of yuan a month by defrauding freight insurance.

From a legal perspective, taking advantage of freight insurance is an act of insurance fraud.

This behavior is actually an insurance fraud for the purpose of illegal possession, through false transactions, deliberately creating insurance accidents, and defrauding insurance money. The subjective motive is not real shopping, but to achieve the purpose of fraudulent insurance arbitrage through false shopping and malicious returns.

In 2021, the People's Procuratorate of Changning District, Shanghai, announced an insurance fraud case in which a huge amount of freight insurance was obtained by fabricating transactions and frequently returning goods. The case showed that the fraudster used multiple mobile phone numbers to register multiple platform accounts. From May 2017 to February 2020, the fraudster applied for insurance claims for more than 4,800 orders, and the fraudulent freight insurance compensation amounted to more than 73,000 yuan. The court eventually sentenced the fraudster to three years in prison for insurance fraud, suspended for three years, and fined him RMB 20,000.

From the perspective of e-commerce operations, defrauding the freight insurance difference will lead to an increase in returns, which will not only affect the flow of goods on the platform, but also increase the freight insurance premiums.

The cost of freight insurance has increased, but e-commerce merchants still dare not not provide freight insurance. In an era when online shopping requires comparison shopping, products without freight insurance are less competitive than similar products.

Finally, where does the increased cost go? It can only be counted into the average order value.

Whether it is the indirect increase in labor costs due to refunds or the increased premium costs for freight insurance, in the end the "wool" comes from the "sheep", and those who fleece the sheep will have to bear the consequences.

Author｜Zhang Yao

Editor:Hu Zhanjia

Operations｜Chen Jiahui

Produced by｜LingTai LT (ID: LingTai_LT)