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jingtaotao, has it really been ripped off by the "wool-gathering gang"?

recently, jingtaotao, a membership-based e-commerce platform that claims to be "all refunds only", has been pushed to the forefront of public opinion. the entry "jingtaotao claims to have been fleeced of 180 million yuan by wool party" became a hot search on weibo. at the same time, the platform's main "all refunds only" model has been questioned because some consumers said online that they could not get their money back after placing orders of more than 100,000 yuan, and some netizens even said that the company had run away.

on september 23, reporters from the daily economic news split into two groups and visited jingtaotao's offices in shanghai and beijing respectively.

according to jingtaotao, the platform operating company is headquartered in shanghai, and beijing is only an operations center and technical center.

september 23, outside the shanghai office of jingtaotao. image source: photo by chen ting, a reporter from china business network

at the "beijing taotao alliance headquarters" in the marubi innovation center office building in songjiang district, shanghai, the reporter saw a banner as soon as he got off the elevator: warmly congratulate "beijing taotao" in room 1703 of marubi innovation center for obtaining an angel round of financing of 500 million yuan.

although there were flower baskets outside the door of the huge office area, during the period of the reporter's visit, apart from one staff member on duty in the finance office, there were only a few sporadic staff members entering and leaving the office area.

september 23, jingtaotao beijing office area photo source: photo by li zhuo, reporter of china business network

on the other hand, a reporter from the daily economic news simultaneously visited the office of jingtaotao at no. 8, kechuang 12th street, yizhuang, beijing. at around 12 noon, some employees were taking a lunch break in the office area. starting at 1 p.m., employees began to come in and out and work normally.

on the evening of september 23, jingtaotao responded in writing to the reporter of the national business daily, “firmly denying the rumors of ‘running away’”, calling it “completely unfounded rumors”. as to why the shanghai office has so few employees, jingtaotao responded on september 24, “because shanghai is the registered address and the operating address is beijing (a typo), it is still a normal office status, so we cannot be considered to be in an abnormal operating status.”

jingtaotao said in a written reply: "recently, (the company) has indeed encountered a large-scale influx of freeloaders who applied for refunds after shopping, which has brought a huge impact on the platform. the company was fleeced by freeloaders for about 180 million yuan. in response to this crisis, we quickly launched a risk control early warning mechanism. when conducting internal risk control investigations, refunds were delayed. this situation was maliciously interpreted by the outside world as the platform running away."

despite this, the relevant incident is still fermenting and there are new questions to be answered: when responding to the company's financing history, jingtaotao sent a news link to the reporter of "daily economic news", which mentioned that jingtaotao had obtained investment from many well-known institutions, but one of the investment institutions clearly told the reporter that they had never invested in jingtaotao.

the shanghai headquarters has few staff and the jingtaotao convenience store is vacant. the beijing office area is operating normally.

according to the official wechat account of jingtaotao group and the information on jingtaotao’s official website, jingtaotao currently has offices in beijing, shanghai and putian.

september 23, jingtaotao shanghai office area photo source: photo by reporter chen ting of china business network

when the reporter visited jingtaotao's shanghai office on september 23, he found that in the office, only the finance office had one person working normally. apart from this person, the reporter only encountered a few sporadic staff members entering and leaving the office area.

there are many promotional texts posted on the walls of jingtaotao's shanghai office, one of which says: "with shanghai as the headquarters, we incubate nationwide."

in addition, the introduction to the company's advantages on the wall mentioned that jingtaotao e-commerce launched a "universal refund only" model for the sinking market to strengthen user experience and merchant quality control.

when asked about the founder of jingtaotao, a person related to jingtaotao said on wechat on september 24: "jingtaotao is shanghai jingduobao."

tianyancha also shows that the company to which the jingtaotao project belongs is "shanghai jingduobao e-commerce co., ltd.", which was established in may 2019. the legal representative of the company is "lin jinfan" (holding 23% of the shares), and the major shareholder is lin xiuqing (holding 50% of the shares). however, the company's registered address is no. 372, jiefang middle road, nanqiao town, fengxian district, shanghai.

on september 23, the shelves in the "jingtaotao convenience store" in shanghai had been emptied. image source: photo by chen ting, a reporter from china business network

on the ground floor of the office building where jingtaotao's shanghai office is located, the door of the "jingtaotao convenience store" was closed and the shelves inside the store had been emptied. the content on jingtaotao's official website on june 1 showed that the country's first jingtaotao convenience store officially opened in shanghai.

september 23, jingtaotao beijing office area photo source: photo by li zhuo, reporter of china business network

at the jingtaotao office in beijing, the reporter saw that employees started coming in and out at 1 p.m. and were working normally. the reporter also saw on the "visitor registration form" at the front desk that more than 20 interviewees visited the company from september 6 to september 20.

in the beijing office area, the reporter visited and saw some company introductions posted on the wall: "planning and layout began in 2017, it was established in shanghai in 2019, the jingtaotao app was launched in 2023, the first user successfully placed an order on december 12, 2023, and it was grandly launched nationwide on march 17, 2024."

the highest membership fee is 28,888 yuan, and the current investor is "rashomon" with 500 million yuan in financing

image source: screenshot of jingtaotao app startup screen

in recent years, the e-commerce industry and consumers are no strangers to “refund only”, but what kind of business model is jingtaotao’s “refund only for all”?

the reporter opened the official jingtaotao app and saw the second page of the app saying: "you dare to pay, i dare to refund, 10 billion yuan in subsidies every day."

jingtaotao told the reporter of "daily economic news": "we started to develop and launch the jingtaotao app in 2019, and officially put it into operation in december 2023." the company's specific business model is divided into two methods: "universal refund only" and "ordinary purchase". "universal refund only" requires membership purchase first. membership is divided into f0001 to f0009. only members of jingtaotao can use the refund-only service.

jingtaotao said that the membership fee is the threshold for obtaining jingtaotao membership, similar to obtaining sam's club membership card, taobao 88vip and other qualifications, and has nothing to do with the "single-purpose prepaid card transaction model". in terms of user fund supervision, the company said that it has connected with a third-party fund supervisor.

it is worth mentioning that although sam's club charges a certain amount of entrance fee, it is a discount store and is famous for its competitive commodity prices. however, the "universal refund only" price provided to members on jingtaotao is "several times" higher than the market price.

image source: screenshot of jingtaotao app

taking the 256gb iphone 15 pro max as an example, the reporter saw on the jingtaotao app on september 23 that its "all-people refund only" price was 59,800 yuan, while the "buy now" price was only 8,960 yuan. on another well-known e-commerce platform, the price of this phone on the evening of september 23 was 8,299 yuan.

if you have activated the "all people only refund" agreement on jingtaotao, according to the member activity rules: with the "all people only refund" activity order, member users can apply for the refund-only service - refund only (no need to return the goods). specifically, after signing for the goods, you need to complete the "matching member task" or "matching points task" before you can initiate a refund-only application. after completing the task and initiating a refund-only, the system will automatically enter the refund process without contacting customer service. after the review is completed, the refund will be returned to the payment account by the original route.

according to the agreement, jingtaotao has a total of 9 membership levels, each with different activation fees, monthly quotas, single product quotas and activity rules.

image source: screenshot of jingtaotao app

for example, the highest level f0009 membership has an activation fee of 28,888 yuan and a monthly limit of 480,000 yuan. more requirements are also imposed on members who initiate refunds: one "3888" and one "1888" must be activated for each order in the first month; one "18888" must be activated for each order in the second month; and one "3888" and one "1888" member activation code must be activated for each order in the third month.

it is precisely relying on this seemingly complex and difficult to understand business model that jingtaotao claims to have obtained 500 million yuan in angel round financing.

when asked by a reporter from the daily economic news whether the company had a financing history, jingtaotao responded on september 23 with a link to a public report from june this year (the report was visible on the 23rd, and as of 12:00 noon on september 25, the original page of the link could not be opened, but there were reprinted reports that could be found).

linked reports show that jingtaotao, an innovative e-commerce platform that has successfully implemented the "all-people only refund" rule, recently completed an angel round of financing of 500 million yuan, with investors including accel capital, sequoia capital, and zhongqing investment. after this round of financing, jingtaotao's valuation has reached about 5 billion yuan.

however, a person related to sequoia clearly stated to the reporter of "daily economic news" on september 24 that sequoia capital has never invested in the jingtaotao project.

on the morning of september 25, the reporter asked jingtaotao about sequoia capital's statement via wechat, but no response was received as of press time.

the reporter opened the official website of accelerator capital on september 25, but did not find jingtaotao in the list of "invested companies" on its official website. on september 24, the reporter also called the public phone number of accelerator capital's official website, but it was prompted that it was out of service. as of press time, the reporter has not yet contacted accelerator capital.

on the 24th, the reporter also opened the official website of zhongqing investment holding group, left an online message and contact information to verify whether it had invested in jingtaotao, but no reply was received as of press time.

how to define "malicious order brushing" is crucial

according to media reports, the cause of the turmoil was that some members applied for refunds but did not receive them on time.

on september 16, the jingtaotao team released an announcement on the app stating that in view of the emergence of some arbitrage and wool-pulling behaviors recently, jingtaotao will solemnly initiate the corresponding processing procedures.

zhao zhanling, a lawyer at beijing jiawei law firm, told the daily economic news that how e-commerce platforms define "malicious" order-padding is crucial. if e-commerce platforms do not clearly define the specific criteria for "malicious" in advance, they cannot arbitrarily determine that consumers have engaged in malicious order-padding behavior.

zhao zhanling gave an example: "for example, if a consumer uses two different mobile phone numbers or id numbers to register an account on an e-commerce platform and then purchases goods, the delivery addresses may be the same, but this cannot be used to determine that the consumer is maliciously placing orders, unless it is clearly stipulated in advance that this situation is malicious order placement. because the registrants of the two accounts may live in the same place, such as family members living together or friends sharing a rental, it cannot be determined that malicious order placement is involved just because the delivery addresses are the same."

zhao zhanling mentioned that the prerequisite for the platform to "not refund" is that it can clearly determine that the consumer is maliciously placing orders based on the rules regarding malicious order placement announced in advance by the platform, and the platform can refuse to refund.

how does the company judge whether users are "taking advantage of the platform"? jingtaotao responded to a reporter from the daily economic news on september 23, saying that its judgment on whether it is a "taking advantage of the platform" is mainly based on multi-dimensional transaction data monitoring. according to it, the risk control system will analyze the transaction behavior characteristics of users. for example, when it is detected that the same account or the same ip address places a large number of orders in a short period of time, and almost without exception, all of them apply for refunds after placing the orders, and the amount and frequency of such refunds are far from the normal consumption logic, the company will judge it as a "taking advantage of the platform" behavior, which is basically consistent with the current evaluation criteria of traditional e-commerce platforms.

jingtaotao also sent a screenshot of the relevant regulations to the reporter of "daily economic news" (see the figure below). the "disclaimer" on the screenshot reads: jingtaotao has the right to monitor abnormal transaction behavior (including but not limited to repeated large-scale orders by the same purchaser, the same payment account, the same delivery address, the same receiving phone number, etc. in a short period of time) and take corresponding measures (including but not limited to canceling orders, stopping shipments, freezing accounts, etc.) to control them, and jingtaotao does not need to bear any responsibility or compensation for this.

however, the reporter noticed that the statement of this "disclaimer" was not directly and completely reflected in the "national refund only membership agreement", but in a separate "consumer notification" column in the jingtaotao app.

for consumers who invest large sums of money, it is still unknown whether they understand jingtaotao’s definition of “薅羊毛” behavior and the scope of exemption.

in response to questions about jingtaotao's "fleecing its users," jingtaotao said in a statement to the daily economic news: "we understand that there may be different opinions in the market. our original intention was to benefit consumers... as an innovative business model, this model encountered some unforeseen problems during its implementation, especially some bad actors exploiting loopholes in the rules to make improper profits."

jingtaotao also stated that it would not prove its "suspicion".

regarding the company's cash flow situation, jingtaotao responded to a reporter from the "daily economic news" on september 23 that (the company's) cash flow situation is normal, and all normal users can currently trade and refund normally. users whose refunds have not been processed or whose refund time has exceeded are basically users who have received lawyers' letters (non-normal trading users).

jingtaotao said that currently, all applications that meet the refund conditions are being processed in an orderly manner. "and our longest refund is only 10 days." jingtaotao said.

daily economic news