Text/Wang Xinxi
A few days ago, the well-known brand Benefitfei issued an announcement on the closure of stores, and Taobao, Douyin, and Jingdong online stores will all be closed!
Many netizens pointed to the reason for "refund only", and some netizens asked: "Are you scared off by the new refund only regulations?" and "E-commerce platforms are fighting each other, and sellers should unite and not blindly be a pawn of the platform".
And the doubts of netizens are not unreasonable, only the negative effect of refunds is emerging, and there are more and more users who are fleecing. According to "Xiao Wang Says the World", in a group in Jiangsu, a wife posted such a video of her husband being driven crazy by a white prostitute buyer, and a buyer only refunded but did not succeed, and the unscrupulous abuse and crazy order plus platform punishment also triggered many people to reprint.
According to the cases exposed by short video platforms such as Douyin, there are more and more businesses that only refund money for the white prostitution party, and start to go through the legal process.
There are also netizens who have reported that it is becoming more and more convenient to only refund, and the logistics are on the way, and people apply for only refunds, and the official will refund them directly.
Some users also said: "Taobao only refunds are not a joke, immediately was refunded only a 218 yuan product, the order that has been shipped before, the refund needs to be reviewed by the merchant, and now it is passed in seconds, this world, it is exciting to think about." ”
At a time when it is easier to only refund money, there are more cases of e-commerce rights protection, and various cases of refund-only complaints and merchant complaints and lawsuits have been exposed on Douyin, and some e-commerce practitioners said that suing for refund-only is a very fragrant industry in 2024.
According to legal practitioners, according to Article 577 of the Civil Code, mere refund constitutes the crime of illegal possession and is an illegal act. Therefore, it remains to be seen whether the rule of the platform is a crazy test on the edge of the law and whether it will usher in rectification.
In general, the negative effects of the current refund-only are presenting, whether Taobao and Jingdong can use the refund only, it is difficult to say, if it is not used well, offend a large number of merchants, it is likely to lead to more merchants closing stores, or further push merchants to Pinduoduo.
Why? Learning to refund only is good, not learning to learn bad, Pinduoduo's success is not because of refund only
The reason why Taobao Jingdong is on par with Pinduoduo is first because the market value has been surpassed by Pinduoduo and stimulated, and it is also reviewing internally to find various reasons. What Taobao has been doing in the past has always been to maintain the balance between merchants and consumers, and has not been too partial to one side or the other, but Pinduoduo's tendency to overprotect users is very obvious.
When Taobao Jingdong followed up with only refunds, Pinduoduo went one step further and began to send money to users, and there was consumer feedback that when I bought something the day before yesterday, the express delivery was slow, and Jingran directly sent hundreds of yuan in compensation without threshold.
What Taobao wants to improve is after-sales, and after-sales is not equal to only refunds
In the past, some merchants said that there were often users in Taobao stores who said that Pinduoduo could refund the same order immediately, while Taobao's '7-day no reason to return' was not so convenient, and it would take effort to return the goods, pay the courier fee in advance, and so on.
According to Taobao's new regulations, if the seller has too many bad reviews or violations, inferior products, too many complaints, and many bad reviews in your store in the past business process, it is possible that when receiving after-sales complaints from customers, the platform may directly determine the return and refund or only refund when receiving after-sales complaints from customers. There is no need for the seller to agree, this point is really on par with Pinduoduo.
Refund-only is indeed a big killer trick for Pinduoduo, but it's not the core reason for Pinduoduo's success. The success of Pinduoduo is the success of the social e-commerce model, the logic of the group model + 10 billion subsidies + low-cost products continue to attract users, increase the number of orders, form a positive cash flow, and then raise funds from the capital market, and continue to use the money to make tens of billions of subsidies.
As long as the money flows in more than the money flows out, the model is established, which is different from the way Taobao and JD.com play, JD.com and Ali are both pursuing positive profits, while Pinduoduo is pursuing positive cash flow, which is the key, not just refunds.
The refund function alone has been very controversial, and Pinduoduo's refund policy alone has been reprimanded by many sellers for being too biased towards consumers, and has even caused fierce conflicts between merchants and platforms, typical of which is the bombing of a large number of Pinduoduo merchants.
But why are merchants still reluctant to leave from Pinduoduo? In essence, Pinduoduo still has money to make, Pinduoduo is the first price-oriented traffic-oriented rule, but as long as the price is competitive enough, there will be display and traffic, which leads to more merchants are more willing to set low prices in Pinduoduo, and Pinduoduo's "refund only" is similar to opening a blind box, sometimes successful, sometimes failing, merchants sell a few orders and lose a single order, and make money, this kind of blind box type of "refund only" also guides more users to Pinduoduo shopping in disguise.
The service fee of Pinduoduo platform is only 6/1000, which is very low compared with other e-commerce platforms that often cost 3% or 6%. Pinduoduo's low-price traffic orientation and low commission model at the same time, it is a carrot in one hand, a stick in the other, if the merchant has product quality problems, overtime does not deliver the goods will be fined, plus Pinduoduo also has the rule of only refund, which makes merchants also very jealous, so they are also forced to continuously improve the service level and logistics delivery speed.
Therefore, on the whole, the success of Pinduoduo is not because of only refunds, but in terms of business model, the operating costs of merchants are low, low-price oriented, merchants have money to make, and refunds alone will not make merchants lose too much, and they cannot continue to operate.
However, other platforms themselves are more expensive because of commissions and service fees, high operating costs, and it is not a traffic-oriented rule of low price first. In fact, judging from various cases and complaint platforms, merchants are choking on this rule, and it is becoming more and more difficult to survive.
Pinduoduo dug a hole for other platforms?
Taobao Jingdong has gone from questioning Duoduo to understanding Duoduo to becoming Duoduo. Normal goods, if more and more wool party abuse the rules, it may bring harm to the platform ecology, if the merchant can make money, it is okay, the original can not make money and only refund, that may force the merchant to find another way to make a living.
From this point of view, only refunds are becoming more and more like a pit dug by Pinduoduo for other platforms, originally many merchants felt that if Pinduoduo couldn't do it, they could also go to Taobao Jingdong, but now there is no way out, and the legitimacy of this rule is questionable.
Some lawyers pointed out that according to the principle of good faith, the act of only refunding and not returning goods is not in line with the original intention of the law to protect the rights and interests of consumers, and touches the bottom line of the law.
That's why there are more and more refund-only prosecutions.
For Taobao Jingdong, what we need to think about now is to keep the basic disk of the merchant, if we only learn to refund Pinduoduo, the key is to see whether it can be truly fair, and the platform has the ability to use technical means to keep the white prostitute party out. If the operation is not done properly, there is an over-protection of consumers, and the interests of merchants are disregarded, which may further push merchants to Pinduoduo (after all, Pinduoduo has low operating costs), or cause merchants to turn to entities.
E-commerce platforms need to balance the interests of merchants and consumers in order to maintain the healthy operation of the platform.
Originally, small and medium-sized businesses will lose if they don't make money, the right thing to do is to let merchants make money, to think about the business model to make profits to merchants, and to do low price priority in traffic display, rather than learning only refunds, the platform does not make profits, only let merchants make profits, if this trick is not used well, it is likely to push the merchants to the competing platform, or cause more and more merchants to close their stores, and the lost users have not returned, which may be the trouble in the future.
Author: Wang Xinxi, Senior Reviewer of TMT This article is not reproduced without permission