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eight months after taobao group followed up on the "refund only" policy, the e-commerce giant has gradually relaxed this policy for some merchants.

starting from august, taobao allowed merchants with a comprehensive store score of 4.8 or above to have more room for independent negotiation on "refund only"; for merchants' complaints about "refund only" events, taobao used third-party testing agencies to conduct random inspections of goods. if the inspections passed, the platform would compensate the merchant for the losses. in september, taobao's wholesale platform 1688 will provide certain subsidies for "refund only" encountered by high-scoring merchants and open a green complaint channel.

"refund only" was proposed by pinduoduo in 2021. the mechanism allows consumers to apply for "no return, only refund", aiming to encourage consumers to place orders by reducing the return process. taobao, jd.com, and douyin followed suit at the end of 2023. since 2024, "refund only" has become the standard for maintaining customer base in the competition among leading e-commerce companies.

however, under such a mechanism, many businesses have suffered malicious refunds and faced profit losses, and a gray industry has emerged that uses "refunds only" to "fleece the sheep". cases involving "refunds only" have frequently appeared in courts across the country. according to the big data report of beijing yinghe law firm, as of july 11, there were a total of 1,448 judgments related to the keywords "refunds only + consumers". these cases are mainly concentrated in zhejiang, guangdong, and beijing. the defendants and appellants in the cases are zhejiang taobao network co., ltd., zhejiang tmall network co., ltd., and shanghai xunmeng information technology co., ltd., that is, taobao, tmall, and pinduoduo.

among the four major e-commerce companies, jd.com, pinduoduo and douyin have not yet clearly announced the relaxation of the "refund only" policy, but douyin has weakened its low-price strategy and refocused its attention on the growth of gmv (gross merchandise volume). a person close to jd.com told caixin that jd.com has not yet issued a document to make adjustments and give up low-price competition. however, many employees believe that giving up is only a matter of time.

according to the beijing municipal administration for market regulation, on august 22, under the guidance of the market supervision departments of beijing, zhejiang and shanghai, the five major internet companies including jd.com, taobao, pinduoduo, douyin and kuaishou gathered in beijing to jointly sign the "self-discipline convention on compliance and operation of online transactions".

the convention emphasizes that all platform operators should adhere to healthy competition within the legal framework and should not use their own dominant position to disrupt the fair competition order in the market. it requires e-commerce platforms to formulate reasonable rules to prevent malicious behavior of using rules for profit and abuse of rules to cause unreasonable losses to operators on the platform.

on september 1, the "interim provisions on anti-unfair competition on the internet" issued by the state administration for market regulation will be officially implemented. article 24 of the "provisions" states that platform operators 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.

recently, taobao group has gradually announced some policies to loosen restrictions on merchants. for example, tmall will no longer charge merchants an annual fee from september 1; in the past, each tmall merchant had to pay an annual fee ranging from 30,000 to 60,000 yuan. taobao updated the "refund only" rule in august. for merchants with a comprehensive store experience score greater than or equal to 4.8 points, the platform will not actively intervene through wangwang and support refunds after receiving the goods, allowing merchants to negotiate with consumers first.

for other merchants, taobao will grant different degrees of autonomy based on experience points and industry nature. the higher the experience points, the greater the merchant's autonomy. taobao has also optimized the "refund only" appeal link. after the merchant files 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.

one week after the policy was launched, data released by taobao showed that the intervention of taobao and tmall in the "goods received, only refund" scenario had been reduced by 20%, and the number of unreasonable "only refunds" had dropped sharply.

however, some businesses still reported that the actual implementation effect was compromised.

the taobao store rating of hangzhou zhuanyu clothing co., ltd. is 4.85 points, which is higher than the 4.8 points in the new regulations. in the week when taobao updated its "refund only" policy, it was forced by the platform to implement "refund only".

on august 13, zhuanyu received a "refund only" request from a customer for an order from eight months ago. the customer purchased a cashmere coat for 2,219.10 yuan in november 2023 and had already signed for it. however, on august 13, a promotion on taobao grabbed this product and directly released it at a 50% discount without notifying the merchant.

sun jiahao, marketing director of zhuan yu company, told caixin reporters that not long after the product was "discounted by 50%", consumers may still have kept the product in their taobao shopping cart and received a price reduction reminder, so they applied to zhuan yu for a "refund only" and asked the merchant to return 1,100 yuan.

the next day, zhuanyu rejected the "refund only" request. the customer immediately applied for "refund only" again. according to sun jiahao, the taobao system did not send a reminder to the merchant this time, and zhuanyu did not know that the customer had initiated "refund only" again. at 2:38 am on august 15, taobao platform directly transferred 1,100 yuan from the merchant's deposit account to the customer because "the merchant did not respond within the time limit."

"the new rules have actually increased the burden on businesses, and they need to provide more materials when filing appeals," said sun jiahao.

zhuan yu complained to taobao platform many times but to no avail, and angrily sued zhejiang taobao network co., ltd. in hangzhou internet court on august 19. sun jiahao believes that merchants should abide by the rules set by the platform, but the platform should also regulate consumers to abide by the transaction rules and should not indulge consumers blindly.

in the complaint, zhuan yu company made ten demands. in addition to compensation, it also required taobao to apologize in writing, rectify the after-sales mechanism, rectify the review mechanism that affects the secondary sales of goods, open a channel for merchants to file secondary complaints, etc.

on the evening of august 24, taobao returned the 1,100 yuan to the store's security deposit account. "this money must have been paid by taobao itself, and it is impossible for it to get it back from the customer," said sun jiahao. as of press time, taobao has not yet responded to other claims in the indictment. in response to caijing's request for comment, taobao said it would not respond to specific cases.

take zhuanyu as an example. after two years of running a taobao store, last year's net profit margin was 30%, and the return rate was 40%; this year's net profit margin has dropped directly to 3%, and the return rate is as high as 70%. consumers are unwilling to spend money, and even anchors are unwilling to promote high-priced goods. merchants like zhuanyu can only survive. "the cost of internet promotion is getting higher and higher, while offline advertising costs have dropped. we plan to switch to offline." sun jiahao said.

whether merchants are doing well or not is directly related to the platform’s well-being.

alibaba group's second quarter financial report for fiscal year 2024 showed that during the reporting period, taotian group's revenue was 113.373 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 1%; adjusted ebita (earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization) was 48.81 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 1%.

among alibaba's six major business groups, taobao was the only group with negative revenue growth in the second quarter; the revenue of cloud intelligence group, alibaba international digital business group, cainiao group, local life group, and greater entertainment group increased to varying degrees.

according to the financial report, the main reason for the decline in revenue is that taotian group is shrinking its direct sales business. however, the proportion of direct sales business is very small, and customer management revenue (cmr, including advertising fees, sales commissions, etc.) is the main source of revenue for china's retail business. this revenue only grew by 1% in the second quarter. in contrast, taotian's gmv grew by a high single digit and the order volume grew by double digits. this means that the gap between taotian's cmr and gmv further widened in the second quarter.

“the gap between gmv and cmr reflects the decline in take rate. why is the take rate declining? because some new models with fast gmv growth still have relatively low monetization levels,” explained xu hong, alibaba group’s chief financial officer, in an earnings call. “in the next few quarters, cmr growth will keep pace with gmv. this is our expectation.”

wu yongming, ceo of alibaba group, said in a conference call that while maintaining the growth trend of orders and gmv, the company has begun to accelerate the pace of commercialization. in terms of methods, he mentioned that the entire site will be connected to new marketing tools, and by optimizing algorithm capabilities, the merchant realization rate will be increased, thereby improving the platform's realization rate.

1688, a domestic trade wholesale platform under taotian, has begun to provide ai tools to merchants free of charge. at the same time, it encourages merchants to adopt a hosting model to supply goods to 1688, waive service fees, and reduce the burden on merchants to learn the platform's traffic distribution mechanism.

according to the second quarter report, 1688's revenue increased by 16% year-on-year to rmb 6 billion, mainly driven by an increase in membership fees. it is the only business in taotian group that has grown significantly.

an unnamed 1688 employee told caixin that although 1688 is a large wholesale platform, it has also been used as a retail e-commerce platform by some young users in recent years; some of them have transformed from c-end users to small wholesalers. however, many large wholesalers are unwilling to spend time and effort on such small orders, or do not know how to provide refined services. therefore, 1688 provides ai tools, sends ai to deal with small customers, and encourages merchants to accept such orders to increase revenue.

1688 is clearly "fighting against involution" and even held a press conference with the theme of "fighting against involution" in mid-august. the above-mentioned person said that fighting against involution is not against low prices, but against the malicious refund, the wool-pulling gray industry, and the price-breaking model of selling at a loss. "low prices and price-breaking are two different things. price-breaking hurts made in china," he said.

1688 plans to crack down on illegal and malicious refund-only behaviors starting in early september. for “refund-only” behaviors where buyers have already received the goods, a certain amount of subsidies will be provided to high-quality merchants every month. at the same time, the platform will open a green complaint channel.