news

In recent days, China's leading e-commerce platforms have announced that they will optimize the "refund only" regulations in after-sales services. The new version of the after-sales terms emphasize reducing the platform's after-sales intervention in high-quality merchants.

The refund-only after-sales service policy was first proposed by Pinduoduo, which aims to protect the rights and interests of consumers, force merchants to improve product quality and services, and combat the long-standing proliferation of counterfeit and shoddy products on the platform.

Competition in the e-commerce industry is becoming increasingly fierce, and whether it is just refunding or offering low prices, it is beginning to reveal another side that goes against the original intention of the policy.

At the end of last year, many e-commerce platforms successively supported refund-only services, which became the industry standard. With the in-depth implementation of this policy, problems such as frequent malicious refunds, loss of merchant profits, and deterioration of the business environment have become increasingly prominent.

First, a store owner traveled thousands of miles to defend his rights for 12 pairs of socks and said no to "freeloaders". Then, a fresh food e-commerce company encountered a large number of malicious order cancellations, and the refunds alone almost consumed all of its profits.

Crucially, these are not isolated cases.

Although refunding only can protect the rights of users, when refunding all orders and all merchants equally, it becomes a double-edged sword.

The original intention of the platform was to ensure consumer experience, but in actual operations, the concept of "user first" was misinterpreted and exploited, and wool-gathering parties were rampant. By exploiting loopholes in the refund and freight insurance policies, various black and gray industries have emerged.

Refunds alone have suddenly become a business. The behavior of taking advantage of individuals in the past has become a collective business model through copying and pasting, bringing unprecedented operating pressure to merchants, especially causing great harm to high-quality merchants.

The purpose of the correction policy is to protect the rights of consumers while creating a fair and reasonable business environment for businesses. If malicious refunds are allowed to develop, it will not only harm businesses that operate normally, but will also damage the long-term interests of ordinary consumers.

Under the double squeeze, if merchants cannot maintain normal profits and suffer huge losses, they will save costs or increase selling prices in other links, and ultimately the losses will be passed on to consumers.

Optimize the refund-only policy, find a balance between merchants and consumers, and ultimately achieve two-way protection for users and merchants through more refined operations, continuous technology investment and algorithm improvement.

On the one hand, "refund only" should act as a firewall for e-commerce transactions, effectively lowering the threshold for consumers to make repeated decisions when purchasing goods, while helping buyers to restrict unscrupulous merchants.

On the other hand, "refund only" should return to neutrality. It should not only be a firewall for buyers, but also serve as a protective umbrella for high-quality sellers to prevent them from being calculated and harmed by the gray and black industries that engage in malicious returns.

From serving consumers to fierce conflicts between buyers and sellers, correcting the error of only refunding is actually about clarifying the boundaries of the rules and the details of implementation. The platform, merchants, and users should examine only refunding fairly to avoid abuse.

For the health of the e-commerce industry ecosystem, e-commerce platforms should protect consumers, but they should also focus on fairness and rationality, and plug loopholes that induce people to take shortcuts.

Tao Feng, Beijing Business Daily commentator